More GDC

I'm tempted to name-drop.  I've met a ton of cool people, a lot of whom are semi-heroes of mine, some of whom I've met online, some of whom I've never met.  I'll mostly resist the name-dropping thing, but I will tell this one story:  the guy sitting next to me at Will Wright's presentation, mentions how crowded it is.  We get to talking, he has a French accent, so I have trouble hearing his name.  Then we talk about what games he's done I could swear I hear "world" and "darkness" so I double-take on his name tag.  He's freaking Eric Chahi!  And he sat right next to me!  "Oh my God, you're Eric Chahi," I say.  And proceed to worship him.

Okay, another name:  Jake Simpson seems to be the center of the universe.  People I've only met online know him.  Friends from college I haven't seen in a decade know him.  Does anybody *not* know him?

And he had some stuff to say about the talk Tomo and I did, in answer to questions that Tomo and I didn't actually answer that well.

Question One:  what if you're starting from scratch with your code:  how do you prototype?

My flip aswer was "Don't do that."  Jake pointed out you can prototype in 2D, or text.  Good idea, if you're making a strategy game or a sim or Dungeon Keeper or whatnot.  Wouldn't work for an action game where 3D is king (Spider-Man or Tony Hawk), but it'll work for a lot.

And Jake tested us by asking, "What if you need to prototype a system that's dependent on a lot of subsystems?"

I said, "Then it'll take a lot of time.  Months."  Tomo said, "You're SOL."

Jake later mentioned that you can stub out the subsystems, and although you can't test if the system will be fun, you can at least test if it works or not.

Okay, other highlights:  Paul Du Bois (more names!  I can't stop!) took Chuck Tolman and me to see the Double Fine offices and to play a release candidate build of Psychonauts.  Very promising - still can't wait for it to come out.  The art direction is insane!  It's like a cubist Mario on acid.

Will Wright, in his presentation today, demoed the game he's been working on since, I think, Sims 1.  A friend of mine violated his NDA by telling me that Will Wright was working on Sim Everything.  At the time I was like, well, whatever.  I didn't know what that was or why that would be fun.  Well, now I've seen a demo, and I think I got more pleasure just watching the demo than I got from all the games I played last year.  I'm tempted to quit Treyarch and send EA my resume, provided I could get assigned to that project.

And my powers of prediction are awesome!  Greg Costikyan ranted at the Game Designer's Rant, and what did he say about Allard's keynote?  "I don't know about you, but it made my skin crawl."  His rant made me feel a little guilty about continuing to suck at the Spider-Man teat.  Of the other ranters, Warren Spector was pretty down to Earth (let's stop being Wal*Mart's bitch); Brenda Laurel was like, from some other dimension or something ("videogames are a non-consensual relationship between middle aged men and young boys"); Jason Della Rocca took everybody to task (game developers are blind, xenophobic fools - more on the "fool" part in a bit);  and Chris Hecker had an amusing point to make about the processors in the next generation - for gameplay code, they're going to be slower than the current generation of processors.

Listen, I loved the rant;  they were right on about a lot of things;  but there is some room for argument.  Yes, publishers are getting more and more risk-adverse.  But Activision let us put this wacky swinging system into Spider-Man 2...and EA is letting Will Wright make Spore.  Jason Della Rocca was saying that Steve McConnell was implying that we're fools, becuase software developers who follow best practices shouldn't have to crunch anymore.  Now, I've read and loved McConnell's book.  It's my Bible when it comes to development.  But it hasn't saved me or my team from crunching, though, as hard as we try.  And okay, gameplay code will be just as slow as ever.  The thing is, gameplay code isn't the main burden on our CPUs.  If the CPUs get faster at processing graphics, then we'll have more bandwidth for our gameplay code.  (This point didn't occur to me until later in the evening;  I talked with Chris [last name drop, I promise] a bit after his rant, and I would have asked him about it instead of swapping new father stories if I had thought about it.)

A friend of mine called the GDC a "fucking waste of time" before I went up.  All I can say is, okay, maybe I didn't learn all that much while I was there, but I don't see how meeting, in person, all these people I respect and admire is a waste of time.  Plus I got to see a ton of old friends.  So yeah, that.

Oh, and thanks to everybody who came by my talks afterward and introduced themselves.  Good to meet y'all.  And thanks to everybody who gave props to *Spider-Man 2* or *Die By The Sword*.  I live for that shit.

GDC was awesome.  I'm still buzzing.

Comments

[Val Vanderschaegen]

I was hoping to make it this year, I'm a first year student at Digipen(blah) and they tell you it's a waste of time for first year students. However I would imagine that mingling with people actually in the industry early on would be a good step to getting employed(not to mention the seminars and such).

[jeffool]

Having been to a "gaming school" myself I really would've loved to have gone. Having went to my first ComiCon recently I can only imagine what a rush I would get off of being around such like minded people. (Suprisingly, there aren't many people who take video games seriously in South Georgia.) Unfortunately I wasn't able to get enough money together in time. Though, speaking of money, Jamie, email me when you get a minute.

[Badman]

I'm getting sick of Costikyan. I think he's just pining for the old days when everything designers did was innovative because so little had been done before. Innovation will still happen, but at a much slower rate. Fortunately, the purpose of game development is not to innovate. The purpose of game development is to MAKE FUN GAMES. Jamie, Spider-Man 2 was more fun than anything I've played by Costikyan in years; in the end, that is what is important. You continue kicking ass and just ignore Costikyan's guilt trip.

[Lama himself]

Oh my God ! Eric Chahi was there ? I can't believe I miss him. Did he talk about his return in the industry ?

[PaG]

I couldn't go to GDC this year, sadly, but I was there last year. In terms of pure learning, GDC is indeed not worth it. If you're a designer, you can spend 40$ and buy yourself books like "A whack on the side of the head" or "The art of innovation" that will teach you more useful stuff than GDC will (if you're a producer you get yourself "Peopleware", if you're a programmer "Code Complete", you get my drift). The useful thing about GDC isn't really the sessions themselves -- you really can't learn much in 1 hour sessions -- it's meeting new people and getting inspiration. This is why GDC is great and why it's worth the entry price.

[Rob Stevens]

GDC is _never_ a waste of time in an industry that is so heavy into networking. This industry is all about who you know, and I'm embarrassed to say that I really didn't get that in my first few years, which is why I'm now playing catch up a bit and relying on the relationships that I'm rebuilding now.

As for the cost, it is ridiculously expensive. Everyone needs to do a sort of primitive "cost/benefit analysis" and decide if you have the moxie to mingle and meet people, get business cards, schmooze, and generally make as much contact as possible to maximize the return on investment. It also helps to have a friend who knows people to jump-start the process.

Val ... how do you like Digipen so far? I've heard from others that it doesn't really prepare you too well, compared to traditional education, that you ramp up quickly, but peak early Do you feel like you're getting your money's worth?