GDC sessions
Given the announcement of Areae, of course, it’s no real surprise that my GDC lecture this year is entitled Where Game Meets the Web.
In fact, we spent Friday all worried that someone would notice that news of this session was posted, because it gave away the company name. 🙂
I’m also on a panel called “MMOs, Past, Present and Future” with Gordon Walton (co-Studio Director, BioWare), Daniel James (CEO, Three Rings), Mark Jacobs (VP EA, Studio GM EA Mythic, EA Mythic), and Mark Kern (President & CEO, Red 5 Studios). That one should be a lot of fun.
Lastly, I’m on a panel moderated by David Edery (Worldwide Games Portfolio Planner, Xbox Live Arcade) with Ray Muzyka (Joint CEO, BioWare Corp.) called “Sharing Control.”
Description of my lecture:
We’ve all heard it, and probably even said it: games are kind of like movies. We have the blockbusters, the opening days, the big budgets and interdisciplinary teams… There are many lessons we can learn from the well-established content industries.
But games are also software, and the software world is undergoing a revolution. The Web world is in ferment – some say a new bubble – and it’s dragging content industries kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The underlying technological assumptions of the Web regarding concepts such as IP, distribution, and user participation are very different from the Big Media way of doing things. Could “release early, release often” possibly apply to the world of gamemaking?
This session is about lessons we can learn from how the Web world works, applied to the game industry, and concrete takeaways on how to leverage the brave new Web world.
15 Responses to “GDC sessions”
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“In fact, we spent Friday all worried that someone would notice that news of this session was posted, because it gave away the company name.”
That’s how I knew the name of the company before it was announced – it’s been posted there for at least 2 months. Pity I don’t work at Gamasutra or GameSpot or something.
Yep, Cosmik. Raph’s GDC profile contained the new company’s name and his job title for ages.
You have a blog. You could have “leaked” the name, dude! 🙂
To requote your question to extremes: “Release early, release often” is another way of saying, “Ship a MMORPG even though it should still be in beta, and then spend the next year (or two) getting it up to scratch.”
Some counterarguments to this are:
(a) WoW DIDN’T do this, and has 7 million players. Just about every other MMORPG has shipped early and they all have fewer than 7 million players. It seems to me, the negative word-of-mouth easily halves (or quarters) a MMORPG’s population long after the problems have been fixed. (Jessica Mulligan probably has more accurate info about this.)
(b) Once you’re released, it’s more difficult to make changes, especially major changes. There are all sorts of backwards compatability issues, extra testing requirements, and worries about offending existing players.
An alternate form that I might agree with is: “Release smaller, release more often.” Don’t spend 5 years making a world with 500 hours of content. Spend 1 year making a world with 50 hours of content (not 100, due to innefficiencies of scale). Or 6 months producing a world with 12 hours of content. But this is no longer a MMORPG as we know it. (Dinosaurs evolving into chickens.) You can charge $15/month for a dinosaur, but not $15/month for a chicken because the chiken doesn’t last that long… which requires a new business model, such as bundling a dinosaur’s worth of chickens together for $15/month.
Alternatively: “Release small semi-independent chunks (perhaps from different companies), release often”. This is basically what the web is. You can change a web page and (usually) not affect any web pages that link to it. Again, this is a new business model, one which SL employs, leasing its own proprietary servers to handle its “web” pages, much like AOL/Compuserve did in the early 90’s.
“You have a blog. You could have “leaked” the name, dude!”
Yeah, but I figured I’d wait until Raph wanted to announce it. A blogger with some respect? What’s next?! A North American MMO with a subscriber base over a million? Non-mainstream MMOs getting mainstream attention? Pffft! Yeah, right. As if…
Mike: I think you forget that Raph isn’t talking strictly about MMOs. Early and often, I think, would work rather well for small games.
I mean, would you use early and often on an operating system?
[…] Raph’s Website » GDC sessions Given the announcement of Areae, of course, it’s no real surprise that my GDC lecture this year is entitled Where Game Meets the Web. (tags: https://www.raphkoster.com 2006 GDC web raph_koster evento) […]
@ Mike
“which requires a new business model, such as bundling a dinosaur’s worth of chickens together for $15/month.”
And thats not necessarily a bad thing given a certain demographics penchant for blowing through content…
As long as those chickens include attributes both desirable to the traditional MMOG players as well as the younger generation of Habbo/Runescape I think you have a winner. Because thats the directional bent of Web 2.0 and the long tail. Besides the recurring revenue streams could support a larger effort that ports content across all worlds, is stable and has a kickass UI.
We’re really not going into the chickens or dinosaurs market with GLM/GMM. But I’m interested in what gamers like to see, and we’ll be aggregating these sites into a um…”portal” to direct users to them as well as a few other utilities, weather they go to Blizzard.com, Sony Station, Areae, Gigaom, Joystik, Penny Arcade, Cesspit, F13, Smedly’s blog, Prokofy’s blog, Terra Nova, Digg free flash sites, or Techcrunch is of little concern. What’s of concern is that gamers get directed to quality content, news, features, services and resources they can use.
If people want many chickens or 1 dinosaur at $15 bucks a month so be it, but I’ll have to agree, whatever it is 2D content or 3D VW it shouldnt be crap, consumers deserve better. I’ll certainly avoid it.
Raph both those GDC talks sound interesting I look forward to heckel….er listening quietly from the audiance..I joke I joke! 🙂
Mount and /blade (http://www.taleworlds.com/) has released well before the 1.0 version (0.807 relesed today), and has had a very positive result, despite being far from complete, particularly as regards content. Using a reduced cost early adopter option, and being up front about the beta status, they have been successful, and know very clearly what parts of their game work. The only disatistfation in the community has been when the next release is delayed. Additionally, they have been able to get extensive feedback from modders while the game is still in development, which may help address their content issues.
“I mean, would you use early and often on an operating system?”
The phrase “release early, release often” was coined by Linus Torvalds when he released Linux.
[…] Awhile back, some of the authors were discussing cl’s idea on the multiverse forums. If done, it would be a unique feature to multiverse. No other MMORPG can offer “100 MMORPGs for $15/month”. (This ties in with my latest comments on Raph’s blog, https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/12/18/gdc-sessions/ , which I suspect many people disagree with.) Name Email Website Your comment […]
Shows what I know of computer history. But Linux is an open-source Operating System, which segues into the question: would early and often work on closed-source MMORPGs? I don’t really expect an answer. Maybe Raph will cover it in his talk.
Linux was unstable as hell early on, but I believe from the outset the premise was: get the base code out to the peeps, they’ll help fix it, and keep innovating further.
Same premise Unix used.
Although eventually everything becomes run by committee….
Long Tail meets Wisdom of the Crowd meets Wisdom of the Techie.
Web 2.0 principles are the principles of the new world order.
O’me’gosh, google-katamary-philosphy is taking over the world…well at least it is infecting the game industry.
Frank
Web 2.0 principles are the principles of the new world order.
Hey, some of us are trying to dominate the world quietly here. Now I understand why freedom of the press was taken away. Hmph. Publishing secret plans for the cultural doomsday device. Sheesh. Just tag the secret headquarters on Google Maps, why doncha?
I still want to see an open-source MMORPG. I also want to see a peer-to-peer MMORPG. As some kind of experiment, if nothing else, because I’m curious. I think it’s possible; I just can’t figure out how to do it or I’d post my ideas and hope someone picks up on them.
I spend 3-4 hours a week cleaning up our home network from the crap that my kids pick up on peer-to-peer. A peer-to-peer MMORPG would only make the world worse imo. /emote fear & loathing