GDC 2004

[SirBruce]

So, is anyone else going to be at GDC this week who wants to hug me, hit me, &|blow me?

Bruce

[Rei]

Why won't you die?

And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

[Anonymous]

Can we at least wait for SirBruce to go batfuck insane before we start assailing him?

[SurfD]

are you imlying that he isnt already?  get with the times man.

[Pig Destroyer]

So, is anyone else going to be at GDC this week who wants to hug me, hit me, &|blow me?

Bruce

Die in a conference room fire.

[Arcadian Del Sol]

Dear admins,

According to policies as I understand them, impersonation accounts to (further) damage the reputation of actual (potential) community members is met with an IP ban.

Is now a good time for me to admit that I suspect this fake SB is on staff?

[taolurker]

I dunno Arc, the thread in the Game forum seemed like something he'd do.

I'm also pretty sure that had SB's login been taken that a SB2 would showed complaining that someone stole his login name and was impersonating him. Which still could actually happen. ROFL

SirBruce, the poltergeist spectre of the MMOG world.

[Anonymous]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  I've already removed one fake SirBruce account, and banned the IP.  You think I'd stand for someone on STAFF to create a fake SirBruce account?

You sir, are a cad.

[cerberus]

well maybe one of us will go to GDC and see if this bruce account is for real. Remember you have to get a picture of him and you standing together, and he must be holding his evil walking cane. Otherwise without the cane it could just be a clone.

[SirBruce]

Lum can vouch that I was there today.

Bruce

[Dark Vengeance]

I dunno Arc, the thread in the Game forum seemed like something he'd do.

I'm also pretty sure that had SB's login been taken that a SB2 would showed complaining that someone stole his login name and was impersonating him. Which still could actually happen. ROFL

SirBruce, the poltergeist spectre of the MMOG world.

Forgive me for not jumping on the "let's espouse teh hate on him for being SirBruce" bandwagon, but the guy's name has basically become punchline fodder over the years, and it gets worse every time he gets banned. Every time he comes back, people just blast the guy, or goad him into the same sort of inane debates that get him banned time and time again.

Not that he is without fault (far from it), but making fun of SirBruce has become such a pasttime here that I'd bet there are folks doing it that have never even read one of his posts before. Rather than just senselessly flaming him for being who he is, let the guy do his thing, and treat him like anybody else....blast him for what he says, not just who he is.

That being said, I'm not going to be at the GDC....I don't know what the point of the thread was other than a WTO roll-call, or SB revelling in the opportunity to be a center of attention, but so be it.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

[WayAbvPar]

I have no problem giving him enough rope with which to hang himself. Every time we have a board shake up, we go through the same thing. I think Bruce has interesting things to say on occasion, but his absolute inability to play nice with others eventually derails every goddamned thread he takes part in, which fucks it up for everyone.

It will happen eventually- no reason for a preemptive strike.

[Jon Carver]

I have no problem giving him enough rope with which to hang himself. Every time we have a board shake up, we go through the same thing. I think Bruce has interesting things to say on occasion, but his absolute inability to play nice with others eventually derails every goddamned thread he takes part in, which fucks it up for everyone.

It will happen eventually- no reason for a preemptive strike.

Maybe it's just me but I see a lot of people where who, to paraphrase you, don't play nicely with others.

[SirBruce]

I think the most interesting thing about this thread is simply that, instead of taking what I offerred simply for what it was, and using it as an opportunity to accept, decline, or inquire about GDC, the usual crowd went to the usual place with their usual hate.

And, in doing so, create a self-fullfilling prophecy by making this all about ME, which they think is what I wanted in the first place.  Yeah, sure, it's related to me, but it's really about GDC, and the opportunity to meet interesting people there like I do every year.  It's not about me.  It's about you, and them, and us, and the industry, and if you don't get that, then just don't comment.

Bruce

[gith]

I didn't go, but did anything jump out at you for being overly badass?

[Abagadro]

So, is anyone else going to be at GDC this week who wants to hug me, hit me, &|blow me?

Bruce

Gee, you're right.  Nothing about you in there at all.

[SirBruce]

It was a joke, dude.  I guess the humor of self-deprication is too subtle.

I can't really describe every session I went to, but I'll try to hit the big ones:

Wednesday was kinda slow.  Microsoft announced XNA.  My first thought was, "Does it work with OpenGL?"  And for the most part it looked more like hype -- they are going to cross-platform a bunch of software from X-Box to PC, and vice-versa -- two platforms that are already quite similar -- and then wrap it in a pretty bow and call it something fancy.  I suppose it will make it easier to make games for both platforms, but the wave of the gaming future?  Not so sure about that.

Thursday was much more interesting... a lot of the big names were there giving talks.  Raph Koster, Warren Spector, and Will Wright participated in a design challenge to create a game based on telling a love story.  Warren failed to come up with a game, but he had an interesting talk on the subject and was more focused on making players have a relationship with a virtual character.  Raph came up with a really interesting concept for a game where players assume character roles in a randomly generated romance novel plot and other players watch them play it out and even generate a mini-novel they can print out at the end.  Will's was probably the most surprising idea -- he proposed setting a love story against the backdrop of a war, ala _Casablanca_.  Thus, he suggested making a love game that ran inside Battlefield: 1942, where a whole new class of non-combat players were tasked with finding each-other on the map and then heading to safety amidst all the chaos and fighting of the other players.  An MMFPK - Massively Multiplayer First Person Kisser.  Will's concept won the contest by vote of applause, but I thought Raph's was actually better (and more commercially viable) which came in second.  Definitely the most enjoyable talk so far of the conference.

John Carmack gave a great talk which I didn't see, which I think basically concluded that developers are unable to generate the massive amounts of content necessary to compete with the high expectations set by other forms of entertainment, such as films, without $100 million budgets.  So, something has to give, and we need to come up with entirely new ways of generating content.

Rich Vogel from SW:G gave a great talk on the proper balance of static vs. dynamicly-created content in a MMORPG, the pros and cons of each, etc.  His conclusion: 70% static, 30% dynamic.  If you think you're going to get away with a lot more dynamic content, your game will suck.  He also admitted that SW:G is not close enough to 70% static content yet, but he hopes to get there in the next four months.

Friday looks even better:

Gordon Walton doing a lecture on requirements for next-gen MMOGs (similar to his Austin talk, I suspect)

Will Wright doing a game design lecture on "triangulation"

Raph Koster, Chris Klug, and Jesse Schell doing a talk on Lessons Learned on (formerly) competeing Sci-Fi MMOGs SW:G and Earth & Beyond

Damon Watson with a roundtable on MMOG addiction (or whether or not it even exists)

And Ernie Adams with a light session on the philosophical roots of game design to end the conference.

After that, I'm going to the AI Programmer's Dinner at Eulipya's with my girlfriend and then I'm going to go to bed and rest my achein' feets.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

That convinces me of something I've believed for a long time. No one but Will Wright can think outside the box like Will Wright, and I'm quite happy for that. Some innovations we don't need.

And yes, Bruce, your attempt at self-deprecating humor did not work, because as you keenly observed, most people hate your furry deviant ass with a passion approaching the matter-anti-matter reaction.

[Gor'bladz]

For some reason that metaphor really tickles me.  I imagine President Bush holding a news conference to announce that we are in fact going to Mars as well as other planets and solar systems very soon in starships powered by cramming SirBruce and certain Waterthread/F13 board posters into the tailpipe.

[Mesozoic]

Since Management has not seen fit to pre-ban SirBruce, STFU about him until he actually deserves the shit you're throwing at him.  Yes, his post included a slight look at me flavor.  Big deal, pull your panties out of your crack.

[Reg]

Is Will Wright still considered a gaming god or something? The last release of SimCity was a fucking disaster, Maxis no longer exists, and TSO was a massive failure.

Who cares what this guy has to say about anything?

[Snowspinner]

Is Will Wright still considered a gaming god or something? The last release of SimCity was a fucking disaster, Maxis no longer exists, and TSO was a massive failure.

Who cares what this guy has to say about anything?

I take those things to be clear signs of just how idiotic EA is - they can fuck up Will Wright games even.

[SirBruce]

Most of the developer "gods" out there like Raph, Gordon, Will Wright, Chris Klug, etc. freely admit to their lack of perfection, so I think many in the industry can accept that and still respect them for their accomplishments.  Also, while SW:G or E&B or TSO may not have met commercial expectations, they can still be appreciated for what their inherent design value.  And I don't think Will Wright is to be blamed for most of the bad aspects of TSO.

Friday was another good day.  Got up early to see Gordon Walton's talk on Requirements for a Next Generation Massively Multiplayer Online game, which was actually a new talk and for once Gordon was not so pessimistic as he had been in some of his past talks.

Will Wright gave a talk on basically approaches to design problems, how to rate them, evaluate them, and various creative approaches to stimulating ideas to solve them.  The talk was more entertaining than informative, with interesting segues involving Mimes, a "Russian Space Program Minute" where Will went deliberately off-topic to talk about his interest in Russian space hardware, and ended with some work he's been doing with robots and some funny movies involving robot-human interaction that you had to see to really appreciate.

Raph Koster and Chris Klug's panel comparing and contrasting Star Wars:Galaxies and Earth & Beyond was interesting, with both praising some elements of the other's game and critiquing others, and I think mutually agreeing on many of the issues.

I skipped the addiction roundtable and instead went the Peter Molyneaux's talk on Innovation in Game Design, which was really an excuse to see more demos and videos of the games Lionhead is working on:  Fable, BC, The Movies, Black & White 2, and some-sort of rhythm/audio/creativity game which I can't remember the name of.  All of the games look awesome to me (Fable and BC in particular) and I have a desire to play them NOW. :)  I wonder how many people are working at Lionhead with 5 different projects in development.

Ernest Adams talk on The Philosophical Roots of Computer Game Design was short but impressive.  I can't really do it justice (hopefully it will be available online somewhere) but the summary is that most game designers and game programmers are technological determinists, more akin to Victorian than anything else in our formal thought, where electrons and the IC have replaced the steam engine as the solution to all of mankind's problems.  Meanwhile, our storytelling and the design problems we deal with are utterly stuck in the pre-romatic era, more akin to the Icelandic Sagas, Norse Mythology, and the Heroic Journey ala Jospeh Cambell.  The irony is that one of the more revered figures in gaming geekdom, Tolkein, was very much a luddite who didn't like the modern technology of his own time let alone ours and probably would have hated computers and computer gaming.

The AI dinner was good food as usual and I talked with lots of interesting folks there including a guy from Google which really sounds like a fun place to work.  I regret not being able to go to the Mud-Dev-L dinner this year but they were at the same time and the Mud-Dev-L dinner was much further away in a restaurant I didn't particularly like the last time I was there.

A lot of guys at NCSoft were there and I learned that they are going to be showing off _Tabula Rasa_ for the first time at E3.  Now I am tempted to go, if only for that.

I'll answer more questions about a specific talk if anyone is interesting but I don't want to ramble on and make really huge posts so I'll stop here.

Bruce

[Neph]

Quake 2 v2.0 an Doom 3 coming out soon from the words of CARMACK HIMSELF BITCHES = 2004 as best year for PC gaming yet. Hopefully HL2 will be out soon too.

Bring me some cacodemons bish!

[NewGuy]

Thanks for the summary. Any gossip, inside information and/or baseless rumours you like to share? Those are always the most fun.

[ajax34i]

Looks like Gamespy has some of the presentations posted.  IGN also has some previews, screenshots/videos of games, and some of the speeches.

[Mr_PeaCH]

Bruce,

I for one would like to hear more on Peter Molyneaux and Lionhead; anything more you'd care to share about Peter's talk or the games in development you especially liked.  Something about that guy and his 'vision' really appeals to me, I'm really pulling for him and Lionhead to give us The Next Big Thing™

[SirBruce]

Molyneux's talks had different focii - AI in the first and Innovation in the second - but they seemed largely just excuses to show demos and trailers for the upcoming games.

He was pretty open about the fact that Black & White was a little too out there, with too much innovation, or the elements that were innovative were not done right.  Black & White 2 has icons, it has feedback so you know exactly what lesson your creature is learning, and it is more RTS-like with armies and so on.  But this is all stuff that was pretty much known.  However, from the demo it looked to me like it still has a ways to go before release.  (It also crashed while they were trying to demonstrate a very cool volcanic eruption.)

BC is a simple concept, where you're in control of a village of neolithic humanoids in a simulated prehistoric world.  I actually think this "Sticks & Stones" setting would be great for a MMOG, but the game appears single-player (I suppose it might have multiplayer with competeing tribes) in a fully 3D world focusing on things like the ecology of the animals, mammoths, wolves, etc. that you have to hunt.  However, he's opted for the fanciful approach and included dinosaurs as well.  The game looks very pretty but perhaps still early in production.

The Movies you've probably heard about... you run a movie studio and make movies and critics review them.  You have to balance financial returns, budgets, managing talent, and so on.  The cool thing is that when you set up the script and select the sets and so on for a movie, these scenes are actually pieces of cutscenes that are spliced together at the end to actually show a mini-movie.  Supposedly you'll be able to write dialog as well and have the actors lips talking match the words (he said they are still working on that).  You can then save clips of these movies and even distribute them to your friends, so this could be a whole new avenue for "Machinima".  He showed a few clips, which were MPEGs about 12 MB in size with about 15-30 seconds of action and another 15-30 seconds of credits.  No mention of what if any limit there would be put on this.  The whole thing sounds great to me (previouse movie-studio simulations have never gone this deep) but I have to wonder if the whole mini-movie thing will actually work and not look dumb.

Fable was the big focus and it looked really awesome.  Imagine Morrowind, if you will -- fully 3D virtual fantasy world where you are the heroic adventurer -- but instead of all the characters being scripted, have them actually all have AI and simulated behavior, responding to you and their environment.  So sure, Ultima and other games have had NPCs that went about their daily business according to a script, but in Fable each person has an individual personality and opinion of you, communicating with you in their own way, and even with each-other when you aren't around.  The economy, too, is simulated, with ships coming and going and transporting goods to local stores.

You interact with these NPCs (besides the fighting and the scripted quests and so on) via emotes -- laughing, smiling, flirting, flipping them the bird, etc.  You can even break wind, which Molyneaux thinks is particularly amusing, although he was a little unsure how American audiences would react to it.  ("Do you have the word 'fart' in America?" he asked once during the lecture.)  If you impress a woman enough in the game you'll gain additional options to give her gifts and such, and eventually you can get married, move into a house, even have children.

He related three stories to illustrate just how complex the world of Fable is and how they've had to deal with various AI and design issues from having such a vastly open world:

[*]He was disturbed once to find that one of the developers/testers had gone into the local school and slaughtered all the children in particularly nasty and gruesome ways.  Really sick and twisted stuff.  While the townspeople didn't like this one bit, he felt perhaps that such actions were simply too extreme to be allowed in a game.
[*]One option you can have in the game is to add cool-looking tattoos to your body.  However, a tattoo also makes the NPCs initially slightly afraid of you.  A lot of tattoos and you'll look like a mean character whom they should probably be wary of.  In any case, they ran into a bug during testing where a tester had wooed a local NPC, married her, and then when they went home to enjoy their honeymoon, the character naturally took off his shirt for the first time -- and the new wife promptly ran screaming from the house in terror because she discovered he was covered with all those frightening tattoos.
[*]Perhaps most interesting involved a tester who wooed and then married the daughter of the Mayor of the town.  Peter said he thought, aha, finally someone was playing the game nicely as he had intended.  However, he became distraught as he watched this player proceed to slip out after the honeymoon and go to the Mayor (her father) and got the Mayor to follow him out into the wilderness away from the other villagers, where he promptly murdered him in cold blood.  Then he went back to his new wife, got her to follow him out to the same place, and proceeded to murder her as well.  It turned out the tester reasoned that the Mayor of the town was quite rich, and if he married his only child, killed the Mayor, and then killed the daughter, he would inherit all the money.  It worked, too.
[/list:u]

On a final note, part of Peter Molyneaux's last talk showing off all his games was to demonstrate that there was indeed innovation in game design still going on.  However, my thought was this -- surely Peter Molyneaux gets some leeway in making innovative games BECAUSE he is Peter Molyneaux. I think if the average developer tried to pitch something with the complex movie-making capabilities of The Movies or complex AI of Fable, they'd be told no and directed to do something more traditional and proven in concept.

Bruce

[koboshi]

This is a bit off topic but is anyone familiar with the practice of the GDC to offer audio proceedings?  I don't know how good they are but if the $400 price tag is any representation they think they're worth a lot.  Any reviews of past years recordings?  Anyone know for sure they are offering it again?  And what about scarecrows brain!?... ahem... Finally the most important question, is there any way to get my hands on a copy of them without spending all the money I have?  Torrents...  Second hand...  Black market...?

Anyway, Bruce, other then Microsoft's XNA what other presentations left a bad taste in your mouth?...  So to speak... Sir.

[SirBruce]

I've never gotten the audio proceedings, so I don't know how they are, but I'm sure they will offer them again.  I also know they videotape some of the larger sessions, but whether or not those would be included with the audio proceedings... again, I don't know.  I would be hard pressed to say they are worth $400, though.  Many of the slides and powerpoint presentations are made available by authors on their web site, or Raph's web site, or GDC's web site (you can look at some of last years at http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2003/).

Nothing sticks out in my mind as being particularly bad (except for the conference lunches... ugh) although at times the GDC staff seemed like they didn't do enough planning in some areas.  On the other hand, food distribution (for lunch) was much more efficient.  Clearly they have learned some things after doing this for a decade, but still have a ways to go.

A couple of the roundtables I went to were not that great, but roundtables are always hit-or-miss depending on who the moderator is.  Some moderators don't have anything to say themselves, which isn't good for stimulating discussion, and other moderators aren't very good at controlling some of the more vocal participants who like to dominate the discussion.

One thing I learned is that Internships are now happening in a BIG way, and are becoming one of the dominant recruitment mechanisms to getting new talent.  Colleges like DigiPen, Full Sail, CMU, etc. are churning out many graduates in the interactive games field.  A large number become interns at game companies, and a large number of those interns, in turn, are converted to employees.  So now I feel the chances of getting a job in this industry without much experience is harder than ever, and you might have to compete with students for an internship just to get a chance to prove your abilities.

Raph Koster has ONE intern slot open this year.  You have to be in San Diego, though.

Bruce

[koboshi]

One thing I learned is that Internships are now happening in a BIG way, and are becoming one of the dominant recruitment mechanisms to getting new talent. Colleges like DigiPen, Full Sail, CMU, etc. are churning out many graduates in the interactive games field. A large number become interns at game companies, and a large number of those interns, in turn, are converted to employees. So now I feel the chances of getting a job in this industry without much experience is harder than ever, and you might have to compete with students for an internship just to get a chance to prove your abilities.

Fuck fuckedy fuck shit damn MOTHER of a damn Damn DAMN shitty piece of  dirty whore cunt... son of a... monkey clitorus.

Oh well, I was hopeing not to have to actualy blow anyone for a job, but...

[SirBruce]

Heh.  Well, I hope I didn't overstate the case.  It's certainly true that many non-interns are hired.  But if I were starting out in, say, college, my focus would be on getting an internship somewhere to maximize my chances of being hired.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

Sounds to me like Peter Molyneaux should never EVER work on the design for an MMOG, or if he does, he should NEVER be charged with control over anyone who maintains an MMOG after release. All of those scenarios you mentioned about Fable really show that some designers just can't handle the way many gamers play their games.

The Movies could end up being a much more interesting variation on the kind of idea "The Sims" had. Lots of emergent gameplay that creates a community and other aspects so outside the normal gameplay as to be completely new.

Please don't let Fable and Movies suck.

And I don't think Will Wright is to be blamed for most of the bad aspects of TSO.

If not the lead designer, than who?

[daveNYC]

Sounds to me like Peter Molyneaux should never EVER work on the design for an MMOG, or if he does, he should NEVER be charged with control over anyone who maintains an MMOG after release.

Screw that, I'd love to see him make a MMOG.  At least then we'd have a new type of failure.

[Alluvian]

Yeah, I would be all over the beta signup for that.  It would be a comedy in motion.  By release all innovation would be sucked out and all AI would be simplistic, but the beta could be fun during the 'developer dream stomping' phase.

I still think SWG would be infinately better if they just told their beta testers to F-off with their suggestions.