Day: February 19, 2008

GDC08: Gaming’s Future via Online Worlds

Post author By adam
Post date February 19, 2008
2 Comments on GDC08: Gaming’s Future via Online Worlds

Summary

Speaker: Jeffrey Steefel, Turbine

IMHO, Jeffrey hereby strengthens the weight of evidence that Turbine is genuinely turning the corner from making poorly-guided foolish games to doing cutting-edge stuff and doing it well. Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) has gone some considerable way to burying the failings of Asheron’s Call 2 (AC2) and Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO), but it’s still far from certain that it’s a sustainable direction for them. In that context, Jeffrey speaks very convincingly and with a lot of apparent understanding about what they’ve done well and where they’re going with it in the future. Frankly, all of the incumbent MMO companies need to be doing this, and pushing at least this far and fast ahead, so it’s great to see someone senior at Turbine pushing this so strongly.

computer games conferences games design GDC 2008 massively multiplayer

GDC08: Social Media, Virtual Worlds, Mobile, and Other Platforms

Post author By adam
Post date February 19, 2008

Summary

Speaker: Peter Marx, Analog Protocol/MTV

Good to hear about virtual worlds and MMOs from the perspective of a mega content / media company. Several interesting ideas and explanations that are well worth reading if you haven’t already been tracking the way that Viacom et al have been approaching the online socializing space.

Nothing fundamentally new, but the ideas presented were clear and consistent – and I’m kicking myself for not having tried VLES sooner, it sounds fun.

computer games conferences GDC 2008 web 2.0

GDC08: The power of Free to Play (Adrian Crook)

Post author By adam
Post date February 19, 2008
3 Comments on GDC08: The power of Free to Play (Adrian Crook)

Summary

EDIT: Slides + voiceover on Adrian’s site now – freetoplay.biz

A good introduction to people wanting to start paying attention to what’s been happening in MMO industry for the last 5 years. Didn’t delve into the recent changes in the last 1-2 years, more dwelling on the fact that the last 2 years have seen the cash-cows of the first wave of changes (F2P itself) delivering revenues that were no longer just “bestseller” status for a normal game, but were actually now much bigger even that that.

So, for instance, apart from a brief outline of FoodFight, there was no coverage of the way games have been colonising social networks, or where this seems to be heading next.