http://t-machine.org Internet Gaming, Computer Games, Technology, MMO, and Web 2.0 Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:43:12 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My GDC 2009 talk is up on the site - How to sell social-networking pitches/concepts to your Boss ... and to your Publisher. Now that the submission / selection process for GDC 09 is coming to an end, here's a few thoughts on the new process (CMP / Think Services substantially ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/01/22/gdc2009-session-confirmed-sell-social-networking-to-your-publisher/ (Cross-posting to the GDC 2008 tag so it shows up in the RSS feed) I'm at ION 2008 at the moment, the conference-formerly-known-as-Online-GDC. Just like with GDC, I'm doing full writeups for each session I'm attending. Watch this tag / RSS feed... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/05/14/new-writeups-for-a-games-conference-ion-2008/ Summary Speakers: Karen Chelini, SCEA; Jason Pankow, Microsoft; Matthew Jeffrey, EA I didn't stay more than about half the session - my laptop battery ran out, so I couldn't take any more notes. I'm writing this up really only because there was one key point that came up which illustrates something that ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/03/02/gdc08-hottest-jobs-at-the-hottest-companies/ (re-posted here from the main IGDA ARG SIG blog (http://igda.org/arg), because the IGDA webserver is too weak and crappy to allow image uploads, which I needed to do :( ) The 2008 GDC Group Gathering went well, with approximately 20+ people turning up. We had a quick discussion about SIG activities ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/27/gdc08-alternate-reality-games-group-gathering/ Summary Speakers: Daniel James, Three Rings; Matt Mihaly, Iron Realms Entertainment Very brief notes... The roundtable this year was as bad or worse than the last couple of years - probably around 100 people turned up on the first day, crowding out the tiny room, most of whom had no intention of saying ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/27/gdc08-free-to-play-pay-for-item-the-virtual-goods-debate/ Summary Speaker: Jeremy Irish, Groundspeak Entertaining, with a lot of very small anecdotes, but nothing non-obvious in this talk. Everything he gave as advice you'd probably work out for yourself within your first project without losing time from doing so. Control... You are unable to control many of the environmental factors (e.g. weather (!)) ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/27/gdc08-lessons-learned-in-location-based-gaming/ Summary Speaker: Derek French Given the title, this talk came far short of my expectations. At the end of the talk I also felt extra annoyed that it felt like half the talk was just waffle, mostly towards the end with lots of repetition of the same vague opinions over and over ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/24/gdc08-the-bioware-live-team-building-community-through-technology/ Summary Speaker: Eyjolfur Gudmundsson, CCP I want a full-time economist working for MY company. And: CCP staff should give more of the GDC talks, they're good. And entertaining. In the midst of a week of depressingly dumb comments (on the topic of economy: what possessed Matt Miller to argue against microtransactions because accountants like ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/24/gdc08-virtual-greenspans-running-an-mmog-economy/ Summary Speaker: Susan Wu, Charles River Ventures + panellists, see below for details EDIT: just finished an editing round; I'm about 2/3 through cleaning this up. That's why it all goes a bit funky towards the end. I promise I'll clean up the rest of it ASAP... Excellent panel, probably the most informative ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/23/gdc08-raising-venture-financing-for-your-startup/ Summary Speaker: Lesley Matthieson, High Impact I didn't find this talk at all useful, not because it was badly given (it wasn't) but because the speaker seemed to be coming from such a rarefied environment that the ideas and suggestions would only work for a narrow set of people/projects that didn't include ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/23/gdc08-building-a-successful-production-process/ Summary Speaker: Shannon Posniewski, Cryptic I was expecting something shockingly naive and/or stupid from the title of the session. The first thing the speaker said was that the title was completely wrong, so I ran with that. With that out of the way, the talk was fine, although small things kept coming ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/21/gdc08-sql-considered-harmful/ Summary Speaker: Michael Smith, MindCandy Another half-hour-long introductory topic talk from the Worlds In Motion summit. Short but sweet. A nice overview of lots of different things going on in the use (and sales) of real-world goods as part of online games / virtual worlds. Misses out plenty of things, but does ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/20/gdc08-thinking-outside-the-virtual-world/ In case it's not obvious enough, I'm tagging all my session-writeups this week with "GDC 2008" (HTML | RSS). Mostly I'm covering online-related and social-networking related topics, but jumping around between GDC Mobile, Serious Games, Worlds In Motion summit, Independent Games, and the Game Design, Production, and Business tracks. http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/20/liveblogging-gdc-2008/ 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 ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/19/gdc08-gamings-future-via-online-worlds/ 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 ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/19/gdc08-social-media-virtual-worlds-mobile-and-other-platforms/ 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 ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/19/gdc08-the-power-of-free-to-play-adrian-crook/ Summary A very broad range of ideas on what should shape game design at a fundamental level. I greatly enjoyed this for the way it jumped to a bunch of related but competing ideals and perspectives. Also very interesting for including a 20-minute section on How to Design for Alternate Reality Games ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/18/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-3/ Summary A very broad range of ideas on what should shape game design at a fundamental level. I greatly enjoyed this for the way it jumped to a bunch of related but competing ideals and perspectives. Also very interesting for including a 20-minute section on How to Design for Alternate Reality Games ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/18/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-2/ Summary A very broad range of ideas on what should shape game design at a fundamental level. I greatly enjoyed this for the way it jumped to a bunch of related but competing ideals and perspectives. Also very interesting for including a 20-minute section on How to Design for Alternate Reality Games ... http://t-machine.org/index.php/2008/02/18/gdc08-scattershots-of-play-potential-of-indie-games-1/