Origins returns BioWare to its roots.

written by Evan Goncalo

There’s no better way to start a day off, then with a panel of well-known press members presenting with attitude!  My first stop was “Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant.”  The ideas represented by the press members in attendance were both refreshing and thoughtful.  N’Gai Croal, formerly of Newsweek, opened up with a presentation on the term “Hardcore Gamer” and noted that we had to stop using it and other words like “Casual” to describe styles of play.  The reason being, the game industry’s audience adapts to changes in the industry rapidly, and we as developers, journalists, and consultants need to do the same.

Stephen Totillo of MTV News encouraged gaming press to write better articles, and went over the four words that must be banned from game journalism – compelling, visceral, very, and “adverbs.”  Leigh Alexander of Gamasutra followed suit with a plea for better communication between the gaming trinity – press, developers, and fans.  Two guest speakers followed, writer from Wall Street Journal Jamin Brophy-Warren and head of IGDA, Jason Della Rocca. Brophy-Warren asked for developers to create more racially diverse characters for their titles and Della Rocca asked IGDA members to get more involved in the organization.

Polymedia journalist, Heather Chaplain, offered a heartfelt rant about the influence of men on the gaming industry where she discussed the male power fantasy, and the term “neoteny.”  She ended the speech with question, “So guys, are you a Chihuahua or a Wolf?”  Last up was guest speaker Chris Hecker and G4TV’s Adam Sessler.  Hecker begged game journalists to be wary of what they wrote, warning that “reporting impacts people, personally and professionally.”  Final speaker, Adam Sessler, tore apart Metacritic’s scoring mechanic, and how numerical rating systems are killing game reviews.

After such an action packed morning, I grabbed a quick bite to eat, and took a taxi over to the Le Meridien Hotel where I met with BioWare to discuss their in-development title, “Dragon Age: Origins.”  “Origins” is a return to BioWare’s roots, and they are labeling it the spiritual successor of famed “Baldur’s Gate.”  The premise of the new title is that when you select your initial origin, the game will play out differently depending on the character you’ve chosen.  People will react differently to your background and race, and new dialog options will be enabled.

Compared to its predecessors, Dragon Age is more gritty and mature.  BioWare leaves the player with many challenging decisions to make, and allows them to develop deep relationships with the cast of supporting characters.  The choices you make will also affect said relationships, and during my demo I saw a clear contrast between the mindset of hulking warrior, Sten, and female rogue, Lelianna.  The game, which should take an average player about 80 hours per play-through, is releasing in Fall 2009 on PC, XBOX 360, and PS3.

Afterwards, I headed back to the Moscone Center and stopped in on the “Technical Art Techniques” panel, where artists from studios like Bungie, Volition, Microsoft, and BioWare discussed topics like naming conventions and the most popular software solutions.  They also advised developers that “in the next couple of years companies will move to deferred renderers and DCC software makers will be forced to adapt.”

From there, I walked across the hall to a presentation by famous designer, Peter Molyneux.  The session titled “Lionhead Experiments Revealed” did exactly that.  Lionhead allows staff to propose ideas they would like to work on, and if approved, are allowed time to experiment with to create their idea.  These ideas are typically worked on by teams of up to 5 developers, and take from 1 to 12 weeks to complete.

Lionhead has created a structured tool called “Concrete” that allows any developer to quickly flush out their ideas.  You can use assets from any of the studios previous games and drag them into Concrete.  After the “experiment” is created, it’s reviewed by creative staff to ask questions like, “What will it add”, “How much will it cost”, and “How do you teach players about it?”  Important experiments for Lionhead included the Dog and Breadcrumb Trail in “Fable 2,” as well as some of the systems in “Black and White 2.”

Pacific looks impressive.

That was the end of my Friday, but as promised, I’d like to discuss “Battlestations: Pacific.”  I had an opportunity to preview the game on Tuesday, and was impressed with what I saw.  “Pacific” allows you to take control of a myriad of vehicles and play your way through several historic scenarios.  Two campaigns are selectable – United States or Japan.  The US campaign is authentic, and plays out how events actually once took place.  The Japanese campaign, on the other hand, has fictional elements in place so the player isn’t forced to lose.  The team looked over original Japanese war plans to make this as believable as possible.

As for game art, the team tried to keep things as authentic as possible.  Artists studied WW2 artwork, military documentation, and actual blueprints so they could recreate each vehicle as accurately as they could.  For the style itself, they went after the 1950’s post card look, a mix of realism and beauty without the typical grays and browns.  This time around, the team added new water visuals, physics, vegetation, and storm effects to their proprietary engine.  I came away “wowed” and wanting more.  Get your fix on May 12, 2009 on either PC or XBOX 360.

This past week has been action packed to say the least.  As always, new technologies and titles have been announced, but clearly the industry focus has changed, and for the better.  Developers are becoming more and more conscious of what’s taking place in our economy and adapting.  Expect to see lower price points, more independent titles, and artistic innovation in the year to come.  All I can say is that I can’t wait to see what happens next.  Thanks for reading!

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.  Find out more at his personal website, www.evangoncalo.com

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

David Crane (l) and Steve Cartwright.

Written by Evan Goncalo

I was off to an early start this morning – the good news being the hearty breakfast I wolfed down when I learned more about Adobe’s new Director 11.5 release.  Dr. Allen Patridge of Adobe ran the presentation, and he went over some of the things users can expect from the new Director software.  He approached this from three angles: Dominate, Accelerate, and Impress.”

The first item refers to Adobe’s high user and penetration numbers; Shockwave’s penetration is currently around 60% of all web users.  Accelerate is related to the “drag and drop ease” of the engine, and unified authoring across multiple platforms.  Lastly, the way Director impresses is with a rich feature list, including true 5.1 surround sound, flash media streaming video, Google SketchUp import/translation, and PhysX support.

After my breakfast with Adobe I got a chance to sit and speak with two game developer legends, David Crane and Steve Cartwright.  I asked some things to benefit the new aspiring artists out there, as well as some “just for fun” questions.

AWN: What should aspiring artists learn, and how should they approach getting hired?

DC: As an artist, find out what 3d rendering program is used at the studio.  Spend time with it.  Spend hours every night hacking on the software to be able to tell the employer you are comfortable using it.  Learn any middleware involved as well. Artists should be conscious of what’s moving in the world.  Knowledge of how video games are assembled out of multiple pieces of art.  It’s not about how pretty your art is, it’s the understanding of what goes into it.

SC: Ability to adapt to different styles is important.  Having a diverse range of skills.

Pitfall is a classic!

When I asked them what their favorite titles were they had worked on, Dave said that he liked something about each game he worked on, but “Pitfall” was clearly the most successful.  Steve said it was fun working on the “Tiger Woods” series because he got invited to so many golf tournaments, but really enjoyed receiving an award for “Hacker 2.”  He received the “programmer of the year” award, which he thought was funny because he was “widely known as the worst programmer.”  It all came down to coming up with a simple method to render on-screen snow and other basic effects that he wowed people with.

Afterwards, I took a look around the expo floor for a while and stopped by Image Metric’s booth.  For those that aren’t familiar IM is a marker/makeup free facial capture solution that is priced well below other competitors.  Customers can send in their own reels of film and IM can quickly turn over results.

They run a campaign called “End Helmet Tyranny” which encourages developers to come to them, rather than resorting to placing helmets and masks on their characters in order to make deadlines at the end of projects.  You may say it’s too pricey, or overkill for what you need, but they have three different levels of service – Value, Pro, and Premium.  I saw clips of each, and they all looked great.  When hand animation can run up to $5,000 a minute in the most expensive of cases, they do it for half the price.

Image Metrics also recently announced that they have begun to a rigging service as well.  This should be highly beneficial for developers who are crunching in the final stretch, and need good results, fast.  With experience working on games like “GTA IV” and movies like “Benjamin Button,” the folks at IM are some of the best in their industry.

I made it over to the Nvidia booth as well and had a chance to learn about PhysX’s brand new module, APEX.  APEX was created to reduce the need for programmers while dealing with physic objects, and it provides a high-level interface for artists that enables easy production of great results quickly.

APEX Vegetation.

First things to launch will be APEX Destruction and Vegetation, but we should also see APEX Clothing soon, and APEX Turbulence later in the year.  The names are all pretty self-explanatory and each solution provides quality scalable dynamic content.  “Destruction” taking care of elements like automatic fracturing, and “Clothing” things like animation blending as well as full clothing simulation.

APEX is available on all systems, and is already integrated into some of the most popular game engines like UE3, GameBryo, and Hero Engine.  On top of that it is integrated into middleware like SpeedTree and Morpheme.  My favorite aspect of it all is that APEX is completely free for PhysX developers.  You can’t beat free technology, especially when it’s as polished as APEX!

With another day behind me I’m headed back to my hotel to prepare myself for the craziness that should ensue tomorrow, the last day of the 2009 Game Developer Conference.  Come back tomorrow to find out what happened during day 5 of the conference, and for an inside look at “Battlestations: Pacific.”

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

Diner Dash's Flo is on the go to consoles.

written by Evan Goncalo

The first thing on today’s agenda was to head over to the W Hotel to meet with Hudson Entertainment.  I got hands on with “Military Madness”, “Diner Dash”, “Water Warfare”, “Help Wanted”, and some other new titles in their portable library.  All titles besides “Military Madness” are meant for anyone to play, both hardcore gamers, and families alike.

“Military Madness” is a full 3D remake of its TurboGrafx-16 predecessor but also adds new features like multiplayer (up to 4 players local and online) as well as a new upgradeable unit called the “commander.”  They are also bringing PC favorite, “Diner Dash,” to the console trio, also now fully in 3D.  The new “Diner Dash” played as easily as the original, and with the addition of multiplayer, now allows for endless fun with friends.

“Water Warfare” manages to bring the fun of a traditional FPS into the family living room arena without violence.  You play as a fully customizable playground kid, armed to the teeth with water gun weapons in the mold of machine guns and sniper rifles.  I learned along the way to be wary of committing “soakicide” while using the water launcher.  Water Warfare is also playable online with up to 8 players, and can make for some competitive game-play.

Last but not least of the console-based titles is “Help Wanted” – a light-hearted, comical, and simple game built around mini-games in the form of wacky jobs.  The game’s art style looks is very “anime” but also have a hint of “Mii” styling.

Later in the day, Hugh Malan of Realtime Worlds ran session, “Next-Gen Tech, but Last-Gen Looks?  Tips to Make your Game Look Better – That Don’t Include Bloom and Motion Blur.”  Advice was given on using Ambient Occlusion effectively, and how to correctly use Contact Shadows.  Malan discussed things like Contact Shadow’s four options of implementation – Forward Rendering, Alpha Blended Quads, Deferred, and Post Process.

I also got to catch “Accelerating Creativity: Building Environmentally Aware Characters with Havok Behavior & More,” a talk given by Jeff Yales, Havok’s VP of Product Management.  Yales went over some Havok Behavior 6.5’s features, the one that interested me most was it’s ability to build out a custom UI by exploring all the SDK tools underneath (animation, physics, etc.) whether in-house or licensed.  Topics not directly related to the Havok toolset, like “creative challenges for characters,” were also covered.

League of Legends is the debut title from Riot Games.

A hop, skip, and jump down the road took me to the St. Regis Hotel where I spoke with Riot Games about their debut title, “League of Legends”.  “LoL” has been in development since September of 2006 by an all-star staff of 40 employees.  Previous titles the staff has worked on include, “The Godfather”, “Dungeon Seige”, “Warcraft 3”, “World of Warcraft”, and “Sly Cooper.  The game is being built in the spirit of it’s popular predecessor (10 million players), “DoTA: All Stars,” but with a focus on adding functionality that was never before possible as a “Warcraft 3″ modification.

Although the game may look similar on the surface, with stylized art that may remind one of “Warcraft 3,” or “World of Warcraft,” there is a lot more underneath the shell.  For one, the Riot Games team did a lot to make the game more accessible for player’s that may have struggled with DoTA like myself, and after a brief chat with community director Steve Mescon, I got to hop into a 3v3 game with some developers and fellow members of the press.

Before the game begins, you are able to select from a diverse cast of “champions.”  These champions are not your typical trolls and dwarves either – they include everything from a boy riding atop the back of a yeti, to a frolicking “dark child!”  Needless to say the developers have crafted some creative characters.  As “summoner”, you control one champion and are able to upgrade him/her with new abilities and items as you progress through the match.  Although your champion won’t keep their upgrades once you leave a match, your summoner will accrue skills and abilities, as well as achievements that allow you to customize the look of your digital persona.

The team at Riot Games made it clear to me they valued the feedback of their community, and plan to utilize it in creating “League of Legends.”  They’ve gone as far as creating a trademarked piece of technology called the “Suggestion Engine” that will allow players to suggest and vote on new content.  With a team this focused on catering to its player base, and a game as fun and creative, I look forward to seeing more in the coming months.

Blueberry Garden wins big prize at Indie Games Fest.

The last events of the day, which I’ll only scratch the surface of here, was the Independent Games Festival Awards and Game Developer Choice Awards.  The IGF awards came first, with plenty of indie commentary on the industry.  “Blueberry Garden” took the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, presented by last year’s winner Petri Purho of “Crayon Physics Deluxe.”  As for the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, Bethesda Softworks picked up Game of the Year for their title, “Fallout 3.”  To find out more about the awards check out: Game Choice Awards site or Independent Games Festival site.

Today was a truly exciting day, with newly unveiled games, the opening of the conference floor, and the two flashy awards shows.  But, the fun isn’t over yet!  Check back Thursday and Friday for more on the happenings of game development Mecca, GDC.

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

GDC gets serious about Serious Games.

written by Chris Harz, Ed.D.

The Game Developers Conference 2009 featured several specialty categories of videogames with strong potential for new types of creative expression and careers (read: “jobs for animators”). The GDC’s Serious Games Summit was an object lesson on how many areas of the world can be affected by games—and how effective Serious Games can be in teaching, affecting opinion, motivating exercise, and medical healing, to name but a few. A Serious Game is one where entertainment is not the primary objective—though the game still needs to be entertaining, as many developers pointed out, else no one will use it.

The Serious Game segment continues to grow; it was estimated at about $2 billion in 2008. It is still a very new industry, based mostly in the US, which is not surprising, since the US government was and continues to be a major sponsor. The number of government agencies using games has grown since last year—if you want to work for the CIA, DIA, FBI, DHS or other “alphabet soup” agencies, this is a great way to do it (in fact, the CIA has supported many game companies through its investment arm, In-Q-Tel). The demand for medical games is expanding, and the business training market is becoming solid. Surprisingly, the one market segment where teaching games would seem to make the most sense—schools—has still not taken off yet; there are a few successful games for schools, but they are mostly bought by parents for use after school, not by the schools themselves. Teachers are still puzzling over how to use gaming technology in the classroom, and many of them seem afraid to use anything that their students would probably understand much better than they do, so the poor kids are still stuck with dry and hard to understand textbooks.

Some other trends are emerging. Whereas early Serious Games were often extensive 3D projects, more of them are now simple games, so they overlap two other categories—Casual Games (games that are simple to learn) and Mobile Games (for handhelds). This makes it easier for new companies to enter this area—instead of having to pitch an expensive 3D game to a client, creative developers can offer content that could be delivered via iPhones, where the content might be simple, but the total effect could be dramatic because of its outreach to an entire work force, and the ability to add and update content continually.

Political games hit as fast as Internet parodies.

For instance, a Serious Games panel on Political Games listed many games that were developed this past year, most of them short Flash-based products. The list included The Bailout Game, Oiligarchy, Shoe Toss (modeled on the infamous Iraqi journalist), Bush’s Billions, Harpooned (a “save the whales” game), Rock the Quote, Gaza Conflict (there are games on both political sides of this issue), Democracy 2, Cooking Mama (a pro-vegetarian game by PITA), The Political Machine, and Polar Palin (a game on Palin versus the Polar bears).

Oiligarchy is just one game trying to convey a political message.

A typical game, Oiligarchy, by Addicting Games, describes gameplay as: Play the OILigarchy Game and do what the rich big oil companies do: lie, steal, cheat, bribe politicians, bribe scientists to give false reports, ignore Greenpeace environmental campaigns, and pollute the air at will. Many such games need to be short and inexpensive because they are topical, that is, they need to come out within days or weeks after a political event happens.

Besides being used to attack opposing viewpoints, Political Games are also used to support candidates, explaining their histories or training volunteers to run campaigns and get out the vote. Some political games have become very popular—the United Nations-sponsored game, Food Force, which is about fighting starvation in the world, has been downloaded by over 4 million players. Ben Sawyer, a Serious Games guru, predicted that the role of political games would grow in future campaigns. “A lot of States in the 2008 race were very close,” he noted, “and could have been swung with issue-related games that provided ‘eye openers.’ Games will supplant direct mail in the future. They will probably be bought by big media firms that are starting to specialize in ‘social media’ such as texting, Twitter and Facebook.” There was also a discussion of using such games for newspapers. Chris Swain of USC said, “Newspapers are dying. Smart partnering of game companies with newspapers could really pay off.” Some types of Political Games (aka “Games for Social Change”) are produced as families—the UK government, for instance, sponsors a gamesite called DirectgovKids where kids from 5 to 11 can learn about government and public services.

Making History.

Business games are finally emerging as a strong category. One example is ReFresh: An Introduction to marketing, which places students in the role of marketer at a beverage company, with the job of test marketing a new juice product. Players have to research the market, formulate product, set price, promote and advertise, and then react to how customers buy their product (or not). The game is produced by Muzzy Lane Software, which also produces Making History, a history game for high schools and colleges, Cell Saver, a biology learning game for Middle Schools, and American Dynasties, a 3D game for teaching social history.

Ed Heinbockel, founder and President of Purple Vision, a Serious Game company with great success in training games for the IC (the Intelligence Community, all those companies with 3 letters in the name), demonstrated Winning in Wireless, a business-oriented game to train middle managers, which he is marketing with BTS of Sweden. “Videogames are proving their effectiveness for organizations, and are replacing the old CBT (Computer Based Training) programs, which are dying a slow death,” he said. He also recommended that Serious Games be called “sims” for certain customers (who don’t like the term “games”), and that they be produced by a company’s design team and training experts, not just by the coders. “Our programmers build tools, not customized software,” he noted. “We’re good at building such tools so that real people can rapidly build and modify sims for our customers.” In a world where Serious Games are moving into the next phase—being created as products for large markets instead of as one-off applications for specific clients—that seems like very good advice, indeed.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

written by Evan Goncalo

Today was off to a good start with Khronos’ three press releases this morning during their “Developer University.”  They talked briefly about the all-new OpenGL 3.1 with a new streamlined API, and also covered their new OpenSL ES 1.0 API, which is coming close to completely converging with OpenGL – something that would enable a subset that could run anywhere, either on desktop or mobile.  They also unveiled their initiative to bring accelerated 3D content to the web.  Mozilla spearheads this effort with the support of Google.  The goal of the movement is to not only enhance current web applications, but to enable new innovations in web 3d created by any developer.  A call-to-arms was made for industry personnel to support and work towards this goal.

Daniel James.

I headed back over to the Independent Games Summit, and sat in on a session called “The Indie Businessman,” a panel made up of Jamie Cheng (Klei Entertainment), Daniel James (Three Rings), and Hampus Soderstrom (Nabi Studios.)  Each provided insights on their studio’s business model, the focus mostly on micro-transactions and stackable subscriptions.  Soderstrom’s studio is behind a game called “TORIBASH” which allows users to craft their own fighting moves.  Their answer to finances is allowing users to purchase the ability to upload their own textures and customize up to forty elements of their character.  When asked the going-rate on a character with forty slots worth of rare items, he replied that hardcore players were paying $1,000 or more.  Both Cheng and Jame’s studios follow similar business models by allowing users to purchase in-game money to put towards “pimping” their character.

Next up was “The Indie Game Maker Rant,” a session made up of 11 independent developers, each allotted with about five minutes to “rant” on a topic of their choice.  The scope of the rants was broad, everything from Auteur theory to what “indies” are actually independent of.   President of “thatgamecompany”, Kellie Santiago, suggested that the game industry is currently on the precipice of birthing a new medium, and that even competitors in the industry should work together to bring upon this radical change – one that would allow the world to view games as art, and to realize their immense impact on us.  Raigan Burns, co-founder of “Metanet Software,” implored developers to find new ways of producing game art.  In doing so he asked studios to look outside the box - to build things by using only primitives and exploring new means of non-photo-realistic rendering besides cell shading.  After showing screenshots of “ASCII Quake” he also encouraged developers to invent new types of post-processing rather than relying on the standard bloom and tone mapping.

Getting food is a game in and of itself.

After a quick bite to eat, I headed to “How Do You Manage Small Indie Teams” headed up by the earlier mentioned Santiago.  After listening, I’m sure the tips could apply to the management of any type or size of team.  She offered several “tools” to managers, such as having a mission statement, plan, and defining roles.  She also discussed RACI charts (Responsible for, Accountable for, Consulted on, Informed.)  RACI Charts open up clear channels for both communication and conflict resolution.

A screenshot from Love.

The last talk of the day I attended was suitably called “Making LOVE In Your Bedroom.”  The solo developer of a game called “LOVE,” Eskil Steenberg, ran the session.  The absolute focus of his talk was pushing developers, indie and commercial alike, to build their own tools rather than licensing existing ones.  The argument for this being that application developers “don’t want you to get done on time, they want you to spend more time, and to hire more people.”  You might argue that it’s a bold statement to make without something to back it up.  He then, under thirty minutes, showed off a whole suite of his authoring tools that he used to create his MMORPG, LOVE.  The tools can only be described as innovative and beautiful – they were highly simplistic yet incredibly functional.  Readers interested in finding more about his open-source 3D engine called “Quel Solaar”.

During the after hours, I attended the “OnLive” media announcement.  “OnLive” is a new console that may be the end of console gaming, as we know it.  They promise to bridge the gap in between platforms and to allow play of “any game, any time, anywhere.”

You can find out more about the announcement and the OnLive’s new services on AWN.

With another exciting day behind me, I look forward to what’s ahead during the next three days of GDC, and plan to deliver the goods.  Battlestations: Pacific didn’t go forgotten either, more details on Friday!

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

Ngmoco founder Neil Young discusses the iPhone's influence.

written by Chris Harz, Ed.D.

This year’s GDC is expecting well over 14,000 attendees, at the Muscone Convention Center in San Francisco. This has become the epicenter of world game development, a gathering of game designers, producers, sponsors, and the tech companies that support them. The venue is friendly (formal wear is a clean black T-shirt), with over 2,000 volunteers to help gamers navigate through the huge show.

The very large ($25 billion+) gaming industry is one of the few that has not taken a major hit, and there appear to be major new opportunities out there for aspiring gamers and animators. The first major presentation at the show today was by Neil Young, founder and CEO of Ngmoco, who presented “Why the iPhone Just Changed Everything” to an SRO crowd. Neal speaks with some authority—his company recently received a second round of funding, for $10 million in venture capital (when was the last time you heard that expression?), 9 months after it opened up shop, an expression of the market’s confidence in this new gaming segment. Neil, who used to work for Electronic Arts, already has several successful titles out, including Dropship and Topple. He cautioned his audience to not believe the haters that don’t believe the iPhone can compete with Nintendo DS or the Sony PSP, because its total features are more than a match for those, and “the iPhone is connected, it’s always on, and always with you.” He noted that it was features, not resolution or technical specs, that let the DS beat out the PSP.

In the past, US telephone companies choked the mobile game market, by letting very few games onto their phones and taking very high cust (30%+) of the revenues. The iPhone bypasses all that—anyone with $100 for an SDK can develop a game for it, and multiplayer games will play elegantly on it via 3G or WiFi. Games can be distributed via Apple stores (online or bricks-and-mortar) or other online venues, which could explain why nearly 6,000 games have been released since the iPhone App Store opened last July.

Neil recommended integrating the native features of the iPhone (such as VoIP, camera, and micropayments) into gameplay. For instance, Ngmoco’s First Person Shooter, LiveWire, allows players to invite friends to join them online, and enables them to buy additional levels of gameplay.

He noted that getting a publisher for an iPhone game is still a good idea, to help publicize it and make it stand out from the rapidly increasing number of such games. He also cautioned developers to remember that the lifecyle of an iPhone game is much shorter than that of PS3 app. He recommends having keeping games fresh with lots of updates—his company will release 20 new levels for Rolando until Rolando 2 is released in June.

John Rizzo talks about the new console Zeebo.

Another major new opportunity was presented by Mike Yuen of Qualcomm and John Rizzo of Zeebo. The Zeebo is a new gaming console that’s been getting a lot of attention as it joins Wii, Xbox and PS3 in the market. The company (partially funded by Qualcomm) is shooting for an emerging market—during the next decade over 800 million people will enter the middle class just from the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China); within those 10 years, about a billion new consumers for games will emerge. John Rizzo highlighted two major factors for this market: a) these consumers will be able to spend hundreds, but not thousands of dollars for games; and, b) regular releases of game DVDs by a publisher in these countries will not work, as piracy is rampant (John showed photos of entire neighborhoods selling pirated DVDs in these countries). He showed a typical family in India, with a TV set, but no computer or broadband connectivity.

Zeebo’s answer is to provide a platform that is affordable ($199 this year, probably much less in the future), as are the games targeted for it—about $10-$12 each. A Sony PS3, in contrast, costs around $1,000 in Brazil, for example, and pirated games run around $10. Games for the Zeebo will be delivered by high-speed 3G wireless connectivity, which he said was available in over 80% of the markets targeted. The consumer thus has the choice of buying an inexpensive game console and ordering games (and other online content) from the comfort of home.

The Zeebo will roll out in Brazil next month. In addition to playing games, it also serves as a router/modem for the home, so the consumer can keep it turned on perpetually and hook up TV sets, computers or other devices to its wireless Internet access. Zeebo is looking for game developers worldwide to provide games to what they see as a brand-new market of over 200 million homes. Since the console (which contains a Qualcomm phone chipset) does not have the power of a PS3 or Xbox (though, John pointed out, these consumers are not expecting or demanding that level of resolution), the company recommends that games be relatively simple and inexpensive, in the $100K-$350K to create or repurpose. Judging by the sheer number of games that are being sought and the billion-person market, this should promise to be a major opportunity for animators and game developers in the years to come.

This site is a member of Animation blogspot, part of the Animation World Network

It's standing room only at GDC.

written by Evan Goncalo

The Game Developer Conference, also known as GDC, is the end-all be-all event of the year for game developers.  You’ll find no fan-boys here!  Once a year thousands of developers, students, and press descend upon Moscone Center in San Francisco for a weeklong chance to network, learn, and most importantly, play.

Monday and Tuesday at the conference are completely dedicated to “summits,” each targeted at one aspect of the industry, with topics ranging anywhere from mobile games, AI, outsourcing, to localization.  Today, my flavor of choice was the Independent Games Summit, the place to be if you want to catch the new rising stars of the industry.  To take a line out of 2D Boy (World of Goo) Co-Founder Rob Carmel’s book, the folks here “value design over finances.”

After lunch, Cactus, an independent developer ran a session called “The Four-Hour Game Design.”  The presentation itself was virtually a collection of small games and entertaining pictures accompanied with captions.  Did the formula work?  I’d say so!  The entire audience was left laughing throughout the whole presentation, and exited with a lot of helpful advice – Things like the five types of artwork involved in lightning game creation.  The five being:
1.    Doodles
2.    Outlines
3.    Pixelated
4.    Basic Shapes
5.    “Shitty” (the slides that ensued after this one were pure hilarity)

More than I got a chuckle out of this session.

Pair the above with advice like “games don’t need to be fun” and you get quite an interesting presentation.  Cactus’ session was my pick for “best session of the day,” it kept my attention and when I left the room my sides were sore from laughing.

Petri Purho of Kloonigames followed, discussing his critically acclaimed “Crayon Physics Deluxe.”  Purho’s session focus was on the importance of rapid prototype development, what he described as “the foreplay of game development, the thing that most guys want to escape.”  His game is testament to the possibility of success, Purho’s game won last year’s Grand Prize at the IGF.  He explained that prototypes are “not just to prove your idea works, it’s a tool to explore it.”

John Szeder

The last stop of the day for me was a session in the Mobile Summit titled “Am I Dead Yet?”  John Szeder, the speaker, described his journey from the formation of his studio, to its fateful end.  Szeder’s talk discussed the ups and downs of industry financing, and working from week-to-week on a shoestring budget.  I’ve learned it’s all a gamble, and you’ve got to have guts to go into business.  What I found his most interesting notion to be was the, “Get a job at Starbucks.”  The reasoning behind it being you get free coffee, free internet, and a bunch of other perks all attached to working a part-time gig.

If today’s sessions are any indication of the week, it guarantees to be a titillating week ahead.  A focal point of this years conference as a whole seems to be “staying cheap” as our economy spirals downward, so expect to hear more about affordable tools, and low-budget productions.  Come back tomorrow to hear more the “indie ethic” and some inside info on “Battlestations: Pacific!”

Evan Goncalo is currently a game development teacher at Bristol Community College.  Evan started in the game industry when he was 18 has worked in QA, Marketing, and Design in AAA studios that include Turbine Inc, Blue Fang Games, and Hasbro Inc.  In his spare time he creates 3D art and textures for game modification and as a hobby.

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