GDC 2010, Day 1

Welcome to Game Developer's Conference.

Nicole Lazzaro

I was too exhausted and needed to sleep, sorry Nicole. I'm sure you did great.

Yoshiro Sakamoto (Nintendo)

Sakamoto started with 20 minutes describing in excruciating detail exactly which Metroid and Wario-Ware games he did make and did not make. (Short version: a lot of them.) Also he made some series of detective games that we haven't heard about.

He said Metroid is the only non-niche game we would know him for, and in Japan, Metroid is niche (wait, what?) and so over there he's seen as only making niche games. But he's a quirky guy and he likes that.

Early on, he worked with Iwata (current president of Nintendo) on something, I think he meant Balloon Fight. He showed a picture of him and Iwata where each has a thought bubble. Iwata's has a bunch of equations and techie stuff. Sakamoto's has "3 + 3 = 7?" and like a cartoon cat with an arrow to a lunchbox and a lizard or something. They have different modes of thinking, apparently. Recently, Iwata asked Sakamoto how he is able to make such opposite games. The Metroid games are "serious" while the Wario-ware games are totally silly and funny. Sakamoto suspects that actually Iwata's question isn't "how can you make such opposite games?" but is really "how can you make a game with a serious tone AT ALL?"

Sakamoto said to explain, we should know what influenced him as an artist. Early on, he was very affected by Dario Agento, especially his films Deep Red and Suspiria. These are horror films (I think?), and Sakamto said he was so impressed at how the films had tension and heightened emotions. There was some certain kind of music he thought was unusual, but effective. The rhythm had a "dead" quality to it, I think he said, and the music stops entirely at just the right moments.

He was also influenced by Luc Besson's film Leon: The Professional, John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, and Brian De Palma's Carrie. He's also quick to point out that he is not a movie buff, that he has not watched more movies than the average person, that he has not watched all the films of those directors, and that he doesn't wish he were making movies instead of games. It's just that these particular films showed him tools of the craft.

Specifically, he learned the use of these four techniques: mood, timing, foreshadowing, and contrast. He probably should have talked about these in much more depth as this was really the central point of his entire talk, but I don't think he gave specific examples. Anyway, these are the four ideas that he felt were very important to making horror movies work, to have just the right tension.

Then he talked about comedy. He likes comedy and he likes to laugh but a) he is definitely not a comedian (his words) and b) he actually likes making other people laugh more than he likes to himself. Making games that are silly and funny is his way of achieving this, without being a standup comic. He said those same exact four concepts are what makes comedy work. Mood, timing (especially timing!), foreshadowing, and contrast.

Oh, and he also showed us a crazy, indescribable DS game called Tomodachi Collection. You make Mii's (avatars) of your friends, then the game allows you to put them into a bunch of surreal and completely absurd situations. Some are like love scenes on a beach, one was running away from a *gigantic* rolling head of one of your friends, or doing silly dances with them while wearing even sillier costumes, and so on. Sakamoto certainly has a comic touch. Even I started to wonder how he makes a game with a serious tone.

Anyway, his point is that the reason he can do these opposite things--make a comedy game and a serious game--is that they are not opposite to him. They require the same sort of care and he thinks about many of the same ideas in both.

One last interesting thing he said, but I have to translate it a little for you. He talked about how he spends all this time making sure the timing and mood and all that is right, because that's what will create the right emotional response from the player. He was trying to say that he thought of the player as this nebulous thing out there. Kind of like he makes a work of art, then throws it into some sort of void where, theoretically--some humans will enjoy it. I know exactly what he means because I often have that exact same feeling. I've heard other artists mention this same idea too. They are designing something that people are supposed to enjoy or appreciate, but...who are these people? Sakamoto just does his best then hopes for the best.

BUT, then one day he changed his view. After the release of one of those detective games we don't know about here, a woman who played the game liked it so much that she sent him homemade chocolate candies. He explained that in Japan, this is what women do for men to signal romantic interest. He said he was shocked by this, like he didn't know how to even react. It was the first moment he really felt deep inside him that actual real people enjoy his games. Not just theoretical people. So this praise he got had quite an effect on him, and from then on, he pictured specific people when he makes his games. What will his wife think? What will some little boy he knows think? And so on. Well, I thought it was interesting.

Jaime Griesemer (Bungie)

Griesemer's talk was called Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle From 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds For Halo 3. It was about multiplayer game balance, and he covered many similar ideas as my GDC lecture last year and my writings. He even quoted me in his presentation

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GDC 2010, The Day Before Day 1

I usually call Day 1 of the Game Developer's Conference the first day of the main sessions. There's actually always two days before that. This year, I went to the second of those two days. Come with me on an exhausting internal and external journey. This is super long, but you at least get some character arc here if you make it through.

Pre-Conference

I arrived and picked up my speaker's badge. I saw Steve Swink (formerly of Flashbang, now of Enemy Airship) and Matthew Wegner (Flashbang). They also had speaker's badges, but Matthew's had an extra green ribbon saying Session Advisor or something. We debated whether this made his badge more cool or less cool. Steve asked if I was going to the Independent Game Summit. I said no, what's what, I'm going to the all day thing on virtual currency in social games. He gave an expression of surprise and disgust and said "dude, you should really go to the indie game summit." Incidentally Steve and Matthew were running the summit. I explained that since I'm going to launch an online gaming site for Yomi, Puzzle Strike, Flash Duel, and probably more...and that that site will have at least basic social features like chat and friends lists, and virtual currency, that I feel obligated to go to this. Shouldn't I find out as much as I can about the various methods and tricks they use, so I can use some of them and write articles about how unethical the rest are?

Steve explained that the indie game summit would be interesting because of all the talk about how to develop experimental games that do interesting new things, but just as importantly, it's "the center of all heart and passion at the whole conference." I nodded and said it sounds really entertaining, but I maybe I'll be a grownup and go to the business stuff this time.

Mitch Davis (Live Gamer)

 Davis opened the so-called V-Con (I guess that means conference about virtual items, but they can't be bothered to use full words? Maybe a less lol-cat name would work better next time?). He gave us many impressive stats about the world of virtual currency. It used to be a thing that just took hold in Korea, but now it's really worldwide. His company, Live Gamer, is a service that handles virtual item payment stuff. In a kind of handwavy way, he said that all the backend to handle that well is very complicated and has a ton of parts. The thing is, I've looked into this a bit, and yeah he's right. Maybe I should be considering his service.

Anyway, the most interesting stats he gave were changes in ARPU per country and per year. APRU means average revenue per user (measured per month usually), and you have to say that as a normal word a lot when you talk about virtual items. Say it with me. Arrrrrrrpooooooo. His point was that yeah, the amount of money from virtual item sales has increased each year in basically every country worth mentioning, but it's even more than that. Also in every country, the NUMBER of users paying for virtual items has steadily increased and also the Arrrrrrpooooo has increased in every country. Even in established markets like Korea, each user is spending more and more each year. If I remember right (ALL of this is from memory, no written notes), he said US ARPU is about $24, in Japan it's gotten as high as $50 or $60 I think, and even South America musters up $4.

Then Davis introduced Dave Perry, and made the seemingly disingenuous remark that Enter The Matrix is one of his favorite games. (Really?) 10 hours later, a guy named Brandon who was not at this lecture coincidentally mentioned that he bought Enter The Matrix for $1 in a bargain bin.

Dave Perry

(If you're short on time to read, skip this section as it gets more interesting later.)

Perry showed us travel pictures of his trip to Korea and maybe China too, I forget. He proved to us conclusively that he's much taller than everyone there. He showed some graphs that mapped out various strategies taken in the online game space and how much money each were making. It gave us some perspective to see the big ones like Blizzard and Zynga, and Perry pointed out how scary it is that many major game companies do not even APPEAR on the graph because they have no discernable online strategy. Scary for them, he meant.

Then Perry talked about lots of ways you can approach selling virtual items. He has a short list of horrible ideas that you should avoid, like items that prevent you from playing with friends who don't have the items, or making people buy new items because their old items are literally broken by some change in the game. He had a long list of good ideas for items, such as anything to do with customization, and anything improving the social situation in the game. He said having scarce items means people will be more likely to flock to the guy who has the scarce item. (Hmm...) Anything that helps you express loyalty to your friends, or to break the ice with strangers, or to recognize people who are trustworthy, are all good areas, he said. Items like silly snowballs you can throw at each are ways to break the ice and start talking to strangers. He showed one game that was a boys vs girls thing, and after the game ended, people immediately left. But they added a thing where the losing team's avatars are shown wearing ridiculous silly costumes for losing, and it caused people to stick around and "lol" about it, sometimes even apologizing for bad behavior during the game, or congratulating each other. Maybe you could buy different silly costumes or something? I dont' know.

Then Perry went off the rails, as far as I'm concerned. He mentioned two things off-handedly

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A Very Long Story About Board Games and Business

I came across this amazing story. Michael Barnes weaves an epic tale of his trecherous journey as a hobby game store owner. I laughed, I cried, and so on. It's damn long.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Epilogue

I was rooting for our protagonist here. Business is a tough world--the board game business, doubly so. Mr. Barnes may use a lot of linguistic flourishes in this story, be uses them well, and he certainly has something to say.