Last
Update to Report (FIN): 23:10 GMT, 12/11/05
Back from GDTW 2005 and
all I can say is WOW. I've attended several
academic run game conferences over the past
few years that despite being top-notch for
game research have all failed in attracting
a sufficient industry presence.
When at DiGRA '05, the
general theme of the Plenary: Game Studies
Now and in the Future was considered with
the divide between industry and researchers
(academic in the main). With games now costing
in the millions of pounds to make the game
industry no longer want's to take risks
on new forms of gameplay, it's just not
cost effective. So as a result they regurgitate
proven formulas which is not exactly useful
if the industry wants to attract new audiences
and grow. However researchers are actively
encouraged to take risks, to push the boundaries
of human knowledge and so forth. So when
it comes to games research we can go places
the industry can ill afford too. However
researchers don't have access to the user
bases or resources the industry has, so
it would really in both parties interests
(as well as gamers in general) to work together
instead of ignoring one another.
However GDTW started as
an industry workshop back in 2003 and it's
only with successive iterations of the workshop
has the academic community been invited
to present the latest in games research.
In a few years time I wouldn't be supervised
if the GDTW model of having both a dedicated
industry and academic stream at games conferences
isn't repeated by others as it provides
ideal ground for not only the exchange of
ideas and knowledge between the separate
communities but promotes relations between
industry and academic researchers.
Day
One
Now as I mentioned before
GDTW runs both an industry and research
talk stream. However being a gamer, I spent
most my time hanging around the industry
talks, although I did have to leave to present
our (me, Danny Hughes and James Walkerdine)
paper on P2P videogames. So I did see at
least see some research, though being on
the program committee did mean I'd already
read some.
What follows is a brief
overview of each of the talks I attended
(full program can be found here)
and some of the thoughts I jotted down at
the time (most of its nice).
Gripping
Players by Making Games Emotionally Engaging
- Speaker: David Freeman
- Website: http://www.freemangames.com
Of all the delegates attending
GDTW this is the guy I most wanted to hear
considering my PhD focuses on monitoring
the affective state of gamers during play,
so an understanding of how games are designed
to provoke emotional responses would be
useful i.e. if a given event is designed
to illicit a particular response in your
target audience, changes to the affective
state of the player could be evaluated and
be used to determine if said response was
brought about and so what should be done
next.
Freeman started off with
the obligatory ice breaker of any presenter
the funny joke and Uwe Boll certainly meets
that requirement (Uwe is directing the Dungeon
Siege movie and apparently had fun hacking
Freeman's script to pieces, which he now
disavows, sensible fellow). I felt like
gouging my eyes out when I caught House
of the Dead, seriously the games industry
has to stop giving him the movie rights
to their IP.
This talk was concerned
with how emotional experiences are engineered
into games, specifically game play. Freeman
began with analysing the emotional qualities
of a series of images taken from his book
Creating Emotions in Games and
how they can build complex emotional relationships
with the player.
Figure
1: Front cover to Creating
Emotions in Games.
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For example the relationships
between the player and game world
in figure 1 are rather complex
- the player takes center stage
as the hero trying to save the
girl from the advancing aliens.
However the story behind the girl
is that she's the cause behind
the aliens killing everyone and
has decided to commit suicide
to save face. She's also responsible
for a friend of the player's being
turned into an alien.
So does the player let the girl
die so he can concentrate on the
bad guys, or play the hero but
risk death at the hands of the
aliens?
Who knows but the process of
selection can have a profound
impact on the player, making play
potentially more enjoyable.
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Unfortunately for me most
of Freeman's presentation covered material
from Creating Emotion in Games
which I've already read. But there were
was one noteworthy thing to take back. Freeman
has expanded the number of emotioneeering
techniques he's developed by 2 to 34 (not
mentioned in the fore mentioned book). No.
33 concerns techniques that create interesting
moments and situations e.g. sudden role
reversal during game play. No. 34 concerns
techniques of the heart, making players
feel moved by their situation e.g. the charge
of the Rohirrim in Return of the King always
gets me.
Pretty obvious when you
think about it, but if someone doesn't formalise
it would one of considered it?
The Game
Attorney:
Ins and Outs of the Developer Publisher
Relationship
- Speaker: Tom Buscaglia
- Website: http://gameattorney.com/
Buscaglia's talk concerned
the setting up, enforcement and renegotiate
of developer-publisher contracts with a
particular emphasis to protecting developers
from being screwed over by their publisher.
As Buscaglia mentioned,
the developer-publisher business relationship
is not like the old days where publishers
effectively threw money at developers to
go make them a game, publishers now require
them to offer a vertical slice of
their game before they even consider funding
them. A vertical slice being a small element
of the gaming experience such as a single
level, but completed in every detail as
if it was the finished product, no place
holders allowed.
Publishers also require
a game design document - a complete listing
of gameplay mechanics, character / enemy
/ level designs and story line (see Game
Design, Theory and Practice by Richard
Rouse, the game design document listing
for The Suffering makes for an interesting
read). And finally a budget, if you want
to make commercial games you have to focus
on the business side of your venture just
as much as the creative otherwise don't
bother.
Buscagalia then went onto
cover some of the contract particulars developers
usually have trouble sorting out with their
publisher and their legal rights. Below
I've jotted down the ones I found particular
interesting: -
-
IP Rights
Developers will always want to ensure
they maintain their IPR, however publishers
like to build a portfolio of potential
revenue streams. Not necessarily tied
to the same developer of course; for
one you can't guarantee the developer
will always be a client. Which of course
puts the developer and publisher at
loggerheads, unfortunately less you
can find a generous publisher, first
time developers might have to give away
their IPR just to get started.
Buscagalia ended with a
few pointers on breaking into the games
market: -
Wipeout
Pure: A Post Mortem
- Speaker: David Burrows
- Website: http://www.development.scee.net/profile_liverpool.html
Burrows of SCEE Liverpool
(previously called Psygnosis), came in to
talk about the development process of Wipeout
Pure for the PSP. Now if anyone can remember
the last Wipeout game, Fusion, it was far
from perfect. Being a particular fan of
the series since the original Playstation
I was somewhat disappointed by the unreadable
fonts, bland level design and buggy framerate
of Fusion, so I was particular interested
what Burrows had to say when he went over
the development problems involved in Wipeout
Fusion.
The problems involved
with Fusion's development process included:
-
From this it was decided that future development
processes would involve: -
-
Iterative Development
For every 6 weeks a series of items
would have to be implemented, if they
could not then they were left for possible
implementation later on. In this manner
successive builds of the game would
have a wide selection of items (some
buggy) implemented instead of a just
a few good ones. Iterative development
was also brought up by Free Radical
in their presentation on the development
cycle of Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.
After covering Fusion, Burrows moved onto
Wipeout Pure's development process. I'll
keep this brief cause I didn't catch most
of the talk, by the time I'd written down
one item, the talk was several items ahead,
I should of brought my dictaphone. Wipeout
Pure's development preceded the availability
of any PSP hardware to run the actual game
on, so they were confined to a PSP emulator
that ran poorly. Considering Pure is a fast
paced racing game, this wasn't a good start.
So a Win32 OpenGL PSP Library
Layer was built that mimicked the PSP Library
functions exactly. To help level design
a track editor was built as a Maya plugin,
with which a track could be designed using
splines, generated (including AI) and played.
I didn't have my stopwatch with me at the
time but the demo took about several minutes
to complete.
To ease Pure's implementation,
items were coded based on the thinking behind
that item. For example a missile needs to
be created, drawn and moved, thus we would
have the methods Create(), OnRender(), OnUpdate(),
or something to that effect. This isn't
anything new really, simply a movement towards
to object orientated code, but it can help
when debugging. For instance if their's
a graphical flaw in an item then the most
logical point of call would be it's OnRender()
function.
The talk also went onto
cover how Pure used LinkObj trees, was data-driven
and how the infrastructure for downloadable
content was designed. Sadly I didn't have
chance to write any of it down so if anyone
who was at GDTW could fill in the gaps it
would be much appreciated.
Other Talks
I also attended the Future
of Games at the BBC by Dr. Marc Price
that day but I didn't take many notes on
that one. Apart from if I'm going to present
power point slides using a 3D game environment,
I might want to at least know where my slides
are in the game world and bring them into
focus, it's difficult to read when the text
is at an angle. The theme of this talk was
on the research the BBC does in interactive
media.
Day
Two
CELL:
A New Platform for Digital Entertainment
- Speaker: Sarah Ewen
- Website: http://www.technology.scee.net/
Back again for another
GDTW, Ewen's talk was on the CELL architecture
and the support mechanisms Sony was putting
in place for developers of the PS3. First
off it was disappointing that there was
no PS3 demo, Sony doesn't look too kindly
to showing the PS3 on anything short of
a high definition TV. Though Ewen did bring
in a plastic duck (sorry inside joke to
those who didn't catch E3). Secondly I understood
practically zip of this talk, which is about
as much I understood last time Ewen presented.
What I did manage to understand
though is unlike the PS2, Sony are providing
comprehensive development support and reducing
the barriers to entry. The PS3 uses C/C++
only, no more assembler and supports both
OpenGL ES and the CG shading language. The
use of out of the box API's such as OpenGL
ES should make the learning curve to programming
games for the PS3 somewhat shallower compared
to the PS2 (well that's the theory anyway).
To assist management of art assets the PS3
also uses Collada
an XML format designed for the interchanging
of art assets.
Sony is also developing
their own middleware
for the PS3 from what I could gather but
there wasn't many details concerning this,
though Sony is expecting a 3rd party market
to spring up for management middleware of
the Synergistic Processing Elements (SPE).
For those who've no idea what an SPE is,
in the not so well remembered words of Ewen,
the SPE's are the orchestra to the conductor
of the CELL chip, the PowerPC Processing
Element (PPE). I think that means the SPE
generate the graphical effects you'll be
seeing during play.
The last point of call
of this talk was of course the PS3 release
date, let's just say a date was mentioned
and it was close.
Game
Republic: Engaging Support for Game Production
- Speaker: Michael Crampton
- Website: http://www.gamerepublic.co.uk
- Useful Links: The
Independant Games Developer Association
(TIGA)
The last talk I want to
cover concerns the setting up of game development
studios in the UK and getting support from
local government. Recently advocates of
British game companies i.e. Game Republic,
have been educating government as to the
benefits of supporting their contribution
to the economy. For one the games industry
in the UK exports more than imports by 3:1
in comparison to the movie industry of 1:2
(numbers are from memory so don't quote
me on them). Through this, money, not a
lot but growing (~£Million or so currently),
has been allocated to support British businesses
in the game industry.
Crampton's talk covered
the basics of getting funding in the UK
which I'll list here: -
-
Preparation
Who are you? Before approaching
your local government official for funds,
be sure to know who you are. Saying
you want to start a kick-ass games company
called [Insert Bad-Ass Name] won't cut
it. The entire games aspect of your
identity is irrelevant. A more acceptable
description would be I am a Software
Engineer working in Interactive Entertainment.
Though technical and devoid of life,
it does have a hint of professionalism.
-
Planning
Once you have decided who you are,
you need to compile a list of requirements
to setup and expand your company. A
vision is not a plan so forget it. Example
requirements would be - I need to send
2 people to E3 to setup a stall and
advertise our products to the community.
The more detail the better. Avoid asking
for money because you won't get it.
-
Delivery
Funding will rarely be given in advance
and so once the plan has been okayed
you have to claim back the monies with
the relevant receipts later on. No receipt,
no money. Remember that although funds
are guaranteed once the plan is approved,
you can only claim back on items listed
in the plan. It's all good and well
to be funded a few thousand pounds to
fund a business venture but if the receipts
are missing or are for something else
that deviates from the plan , you won't
be able to claim anything back.
Crampton mentioned this is the biggest
problem with companies that are government
funded, they forget to play by the systems
rules.
-
Tracking
With anything that involves tax-payers
money, you have to compile a report.
What is expected is a summary of how
the funds benefited your business. For
example, if you managed to secure funds
for a trip to the Games Developer Conference,
saying it kicked ass would be bad. An
ideal report would include items such
as the companies you talked too (contacts),
products sold (if applicable) and training
acquired e.g. did you attend a seminar
at the conference.
If a report is not filed you seriously
damage your chances of acquiring further
government funding.
Crampton also provided
some handy pointers for working in the UK
games industry, they are as follows: -
-
If asking for funds,
paint a positive image of yourself.
If you act as if your company would
fail without the funds then your not
likely to get them. You can also drops
hints that it would be cheaper for you
to run your business in another part
of the UK. Obviously the more people
who work for you the better this line
of reasoning will work.
Other
Talks
The second day was busier
day than the first for industry talks, well
I had to skip 3 of them on the first day
to do my talk on P2P games. I don't think
my department would of been too happy with
me if I decided to skip it.
Anyway on the second day
I also attended Path Planning in Games
by Prof. Mark Overmars. Not much to talk
about really as AI is not my particular
subject area so I understood pretty much
nothing. Though Overmars did bring up something
I thought was poignant considering current
trends in the industry - as the realism
of game graphics increases so does the expectation
for more realistic behaviors. So if the
next generation games still suffer from
I walk on rails AI, we've got problems.
I also attended talks Iterative
Development: The Technical Requirements
of Strike Teams in Radical's Hulk Ultimate
Destruction by Ben Geiser, How
and Why we Play Games by Chris Bateman,
Gameplay Design by Dino Dini and An
Open Approach to Game Development: New Skills,
New Tools, New Business Models by Jon
Wetherall and Chris Orton.
I don't have the time to
formalise my notes at the moment so if you
want to know more I recommend you contact
the relevant speaker. I will say this though,
Dini's talk didn't exactly instill me with
confidence, though I partially agreed with
his line of thought that game development
should focus on design instead of technological
improvements, only quoting yourself as a
beneficiary of the technique doesn't count
as a valid example in my book. And I swear
one of the speakers from An Open Approach
to Game Development was Del-Boy in
disguise (though I can't remember which
one it was, invisible software indeed).
Mood [23:10] | Ring : N/A
| ECG : N/A |
