>>>>> CONTINUED
page 1
| 2
The Expo Floor
I didn't spend much time in the Expo this year, but
judging from the comments I gleaned from other
participants I don't think I missed a whole lot. There
just wasn't much happening, with the partial exceptions
of the job fair, which seemed larger and more active
than it had been in recent years, and the book
publishers, ever more numerous and carrying gigantic
collections.
Apparently, the exhibitors knew they didn't have much
of an argument to attract crowds, because many of them
resorted to high-priced lottery items and to the
annoying tactic of requiring winners to be present at
their booths at the time of the draw to receive their
prizes. Note to all exhibitors: showing up at the same
booth every half hour for three days, hoping to win an
iPod, is creepy. Do you really want to encourage that
kind of behavior?
The big lotteries notwithstanding, the free stuff to
be collected on the expo floor this year delved ever
deeper in the nether regions of cheapassitude. I had
broken my key ring the week before the show, so I was
grateful for the sturdy ones nVidia were giving away. I
also grabbed two fortune cookies (flavors: Red Chemical
and Green Chemical) and three t-shirts, one of which I
might actually consider wearing outside of the house
someday. Even the speaker freebie, which used to be cool
(a board game of Go, a little device with 12 classic
Atari games embedded) devolved into a 3D ViewMaster
kiddie toy with pictures of last year's GDC in it. That
sort of thing is entertaining for maybe 1.5 seconds,
which coincidentally is how long mine worked before it
broke. One hundred more grams of plastic in a California
landfill.
Other than that, nothing; I'm not about to get the
rubber-glove treatment from an overzealous airport
security officer just to bring home a Nerf missile.
Speaking of t-shirts, long gone are the days when you
could renew your entire wardrobe during the booth crawl.
These days, nobody has t-shirts, and everybody has beer
instead, which strikes me as odd from a marketing
standpoint: a t-shirt transforms a person into a walking
billboard for years, while beer is gone in minutes.
Plus, if you drink enough of it, you won't even remember
the company that was gracious enough to provide you with
a hangover. Makes no sense to me. Maybe it would if I
started drinking like everyone else.
And what about the booth babes, say you? Well,
there's not much to report. S3 had a couple of
attractive ladies. One bored-looking woman was passing
condoms and "Practice Safe Publishing" fliers in front
of the convention center. And there was this one girl
clad in a bikini and body paint (don't know which
company, don't care either), but you can't really call
her a booth babe, because babes have to be, you know,
attractive and nice and all that stuff. Whereas she
looked scary and mean. Not that I can blame her; if I
had to walk around with candy in my cleavage all day, I
wouldn't be happy with my career either. Her
cheetah-pattern body paint wasn't any better: I guess
they were going for the Jadzia Dax vibe, but the result
was more Chester Cheetos meets the Wicked Witch. Not
quite worthy of a spot in the DigiScents Hall of Shame,
but making a strong case for a Dishonorable Mention.
The Quotes
Here is a collection of the best lines of the week,
in no particular order, and hopefully not too mangled by
my meager powers of fast transcription. Some contain
good advice, while others just poke fun at the entire
world:
[] "The job of a puzzle designer is to make
people feel smart." – Scott Kim, Casual Games Summit.
[] "How big can games be and still be any
good?" – Soren Johnson, Lead Designer, Civilization 4.
[] "Microprose didn't consider Civilization
to be a franchise, so they didn't expect much from
Civ2." – Soren Johnson.
[] "The secret to a successful sequel: one
third new, one third improved, one third exactly the
same." – Bing Gordon.
[] "Anyone who wears sunglasses indoors and is
not blind is a wanker. And anyone who does kung fu in a
raincoat is a moron." – Ernest Adams on The Matrix.
[] "Be obsessive about the first 30 minutes of
gameplay." – Neil Young, producer of The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King and new general
manager at Maxis.
[] "My bad." – Neil Young, answering a
question about why Return of the King is so much
harder than The Two Towers.
[] "Polygon for polygon, PSP is more powerful
than PS2." – A developer whose name I didn't catch,
during the Sony keynote.
[] "I'd like to thank [my boss] for the raise
he's about to give me." – One of the IGF award winners.
[] "I wanted to make pinball machines. Only
after joining Namco did I learn they didn't make pinball
machines and I'd have to design video games." – Toru
Iwatani, creator of Pac Man.
[] "Most people don't like things that are too
difficult. Players need to understand and accept the
reasons for their failures." – Toru Iwatani.
[] "Confucius say: Man who watches dirty movie
on little television, envious of man with big one." –
Expo floor fortune cookie. Sigh…
Personal Comments
Before I go, let me share a couple of observations
that don't really fit anywhere else:
[] The surreal two-part "movie" starring the
Super Mario sprites that Neil Young showed during
his lecture was a sight to behold. No need for high
technology to convey emotion; little blocky characters
can do it if we give them the right dialogue.
[] A priceless moment: the S2 team, winners of
the IGF's Seumas McNally grand prize in the open
category, gave a rather lengthy but touching acceptance
speech – and then left the stage without their award.
[] Not quite sure what to think of Microsoft's
XNA initiative, which is intended to merge the toolsets
for Xbox and Windows. On one hand, anything that makes
development easier is good. On the other hand,
Microsoft's claim that XNA will cut down the amount of
time devoted to building engines and tools from 80% of
development to 20% is rather hard to swallow. On the
gripping hand, some of Microsoft's game initiatives have
been amazing successes (DirectX), while others have
garnered reasonable acceptance (Xbox) and others have
vanished utterly (a proposed graphics hardware standard
their evangelists presented to us back in 1997 and whose
name I can't even remember). So who knows; maybe we'll
all be praising XNA for revolutionizing the industry in
2009. But I doubt it.
[] The game I am most looking forward to after
the show? Civilization 4. Lead designer Soren
Johnson gave us a quick peek at the series' next
installment, which will feature religion as a gameplay
element, ditch those annoying whack-a-mole pollution
squares, and integrate Python to help fans design their
own AI. Can't wait.
[] Creepiest thing I've seen all week: During
the PlayStation keynote, all of the people in the videos
were identified by name, except for EA employees who
were simply referred to by job title. I hope it was a
mistake. I hope.
[] Ego boost of the week: Dave Arneson, the
"father of role-playing" and co-creator of Dungeons
and Dragons, read my game design book and he liked
it! Woo hoo!
[] During his keynote address at the Business
Summit, Ray Muzyka stressed the importance of building
developer brands in addition to the ubiquitous
publishers'. That's a good idea, but I would go one step
further and say that we need to push individual
developers of valor as genuine stars. Bosses won't like
the idea, because stars cost money, but there's just no
justification for the fact that millions of players
don't know who Will Wright is.
[] The idea of distributing the conference
t-shirts at the Choice Awards didn't work any better
this year than last. The lines were enormous, the shirts
apparently not even packed together by size, and the
staff, left to sort through their piles in the dark. The
fact that there was a buffet with even longer lines in
the tiny Civic Center lobby only compounded the chaos.
Come on, guys: I know you're saving a few bucks by not
giving shirts to people who don't sit through the
awards, but at $1,200 a pop, you're not going to get any
sympathy from this corner. Give the shirts at
registration and find another way to pack the room for
the awards.
The Best For Last
Finally, the GDC is moving out of San Jose! No more
traffic jams caused by roadwork that makes no measurable
progress from year to year. Better yet: San Francisco,
the GDC's new home, has direct flights from just about
everywhere; no more connections in Chicago O'Hare (a
lovely place, if you don't mind staying there forever)
or Washington Dulles (the T terminal needs to be
fumigated, then bleached, then torn down). Best of all:
no more San Jose Convention Center food! Yay!
Bottom line: I wouldn't have bet on it two weeks ago,
but it looks like I might be going again in 2005.
Now, about that speaking schedule…
<<<<<BACK page 1
| 2
