Game talk

This is the catch-all category for stuff about games and game design. It easily makes up the vast majority of the site’s content. If you are looking for something specific, I highly recommend looking into the tags used on the site instead. They can narrow down the hunt immensely.

GDCOnline: Ultima Online postmortem

 Posted by (Visited 12633 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Aug 172012
 

Game Developers Conference | Check out the origin of Ultima Online at GDC Online 2012.

This is one of three things that I’ll be doing at GDCO in Austin this October. I’ll let you know what the other two are as they get announced. 🙂 Have you registered yet? Why not?

Speaker/s: Rich Vogel (Independent), Raph Koster (Playdom, San Diego) and Starr M. Long (The Walt Disney Company)
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Design , Production / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: TBD

Description: At first, it was mostly a team of newbies. For a while, the office space was a few rooms on a floor that was gutted for construction — you could literally walk off the 5th floor of building and plunge to your death if you weren’t careful. The artists sat in the hallway. And the team was out to change everything. Ultima Online was not only one of the first graphical MMORPGs, it also set the standard for player vs player combat and sandbox/emergent gameplay in online titles for many years to come. Three of the UO team’s chief members — Raph Koster, Rich Vogel, and Starr Long (all of whom went on to shape the online gaming landscape) — will deliver a postmortem on the landmark title, reflecting on the challenges they faced from early development to maintaining the game well after its launch. Come learn how a combination of insane ambition and idealistic cluelessness can sometimes result in creating something that changes people’s lives and the course of an industry.

Takeaway: Skunkworks development can actually work! Learn about the challenges in spinning up a service organization from scratch. And what exactly happened with that crazy dragons eating deer thing?

Two cultures and games

 Posted by (Visited 26243 times)  Game talk
Jul 062012
 

In which I act like a crotchety old man urging the kids off my lawn.

Between this piece at Gamasutra by Neils Clark (and especially Keith Burgun‘s comments in the discussion thread), and this blog post that caught my eye, “Designing for Grace”, I am struck once again by the way in which the gap between two cultures is causing strife in the game design community.

I mean, take a look at what Jonas Kyratzes says in “Designing for Grace”:

To say that story is a form of feedback rather than a game mechanic is not so much to make an incorrect statement (well, it is, but let’s not go there now) as to make a statement about a different matter in a different language on a different planet in a different universe… [emphasis mine]

Holy Cow. Talk about a culture gap. Now, he goes on to discuss what it is he aims for, which is “grace,” and which he defines as something very real, but that the engineering-minded cannot grasp.

This is temper-tantrum-inducing for me, because I have been working hard on being an artist for a period approximately equal to the time that Jonas Kyratzes has been alive.

But I have no beef with him overall, really, because Jonas Kyratzes is reaching for the value of games.

Continue reading »

GDCOnline reg is open

 Posted by (Visited 11334 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Jun 142012
 

 

Game Developers Conference Online 10.09.12 – 10.11.12 | Austin, TX.

This will be the tenth anniversary of what was once known as just the “Austin Game Conference.” It has always been focused on online, from the first day, back when getting together enough people to talk about online games for multiple days was a challenge.

Now online is where it’s at — just as we were saying all those years ago. It’s shaping up to be a a great set of sessions (disclaimer: I am on the advisory board, so I am biased!).

Trivia: this means it will also be the tenth anniversary of “A Theory of Fun” — the original talk was a keynote at the very first conference.

GDC Online 2012 Call for Speakers

 Posted by (Visited 15019 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Apr 202012
 

I’m on the Advisory Board again this year. Submit your talks!

GDC Online 2012 Call for Speakers Open through May 2

The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables, full day tutorials and
panels at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Online 2012 is
now open through Wednesday, May 2nd.

GDC Online focuses on the development of connected games including
social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online
titles, large-scale MMOs, and beyond. The event returns to Austin, Texas
on October 9-11, 2012.

The advisory board is seeking submissions from social & online game
professionals with expertise in any of the following tracks: Business
& Marketing, Design, Production, Programming and Customer Experience.
We are also accepting submissions for the four summit programs; Game
Narrative Summit, Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, Game Dev Start-Up
Summit and GDC Gamification Summit.

*Please see our submission guidelines and full details here:
http://www.gdconline.com/conference/c4p/index.html

*Submit a proposal here:
http://online2012.gdc4p.com/

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