GDC 2010 Coverage

Wednesday, March 10

20:47 PST / 04:47 GMT (Phil): LucasArts was the host of the next party on today's schedule, announcing Secret of Monkey Island 2 Special Edition - which will basically do all the same things that the SE version for the original game did, but also include a few extras, such as director's commentary.

Meanwhile, chatting to LucasArts president Darrell Rodriguez afterwards, the company definitely feels there's room for re-imaginings and additional new content in that franchise - but there's also some work going on behind the scenes on original IP while the company is growing its development headcount. No hints on what that might be, but we can rest assured that it'll be story-driven. The full interview will be published next week.

16:38 PST / 00:38 GMT (Phil): As well as the standard motion-based titles you'd expect (golf, table tennis, etc) Sony showed off integration with a couple of existing titles.

LittleBigPlanet enables a second player with a motion controller to interact in the LBP environment collaboratively, while EyePet will also allow Move functionality.

Meanwhile a new game called Motion Fighters was unveiled, although that's only a working title. It was pre-alpha code, noted the demo, and only 20 per cent complete, but showed off some punching and "dirty" moves, as well as dodging.

Finally on the game front it was revealed that SOCOM 4 could be played all the way through using a Move pad - less of a "jumping around" game, but the controls looked accurate enough to make it feasible. But... "There's a lot more to come in the coming months" - pointing ahead to a stack of new reveals at E3.

16:29 PST / 00:29 GMT (Phil): Something mentioned in passing by Dille was a stock shortage for the PlayStation 3 Slim in North America. "We're working to address those, but it's a high class problem."

16:24 PST / 00:24 GMT (Phil): The Sony press conference is well underway - PlayStation Move is the name for the company's motion controller - not Arc, Gem or Laser... thankfully. Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida was up on stage first to announce the brand, Sony's answer to the Wiimote and Natal, before handing over to Peter Dille, VP of marketing for SCEA.

The headline price point is "under $100" for a PlayStation Eye, PlayStation Move and a game in a bundle.

15:05 PST / 23:05 GMT (Phil): Other snippets from the discussion included the revelation that EA could only realistically put out two updates to its Madden titles during the key sales windows, because the process for implementing those updates put in place by the platform holders required a 90-day turnaround.

That was pretty quickly contrasted with the total amount of time it takes companies like Playfish to create and launch a game from scratch - "about 3-4 months" - although Segerstrale noted that once a social game was launched it saw ongoing development.

He also noted that, from a publisher's perspective, a one-console landscape would be preferable - but that companies like EA was so practiced at catering for 2-3 consoles that it wasn't much of an issue.

And he also counselled smaller teams starting out that when considering the problem of funding, that if they could solve the 'speed issue' - ie, the amount of time it took to make a game - they'd quickly find the funding issue would go away. The point was interesting, though as practical advice it didn't yield too much more in the way of meat on the bone.

So that was that for this year's Lunch with Luminaries - (so far) nobody has quit their role, as has become tradition: Phil Harrison famously dissed Sony Japan a couple of years ago before leaving to join Atari, and Neil Young also jumped ship not long after a LWL session for ngmoco... obviously if we hear of anything like that happening to Spector, Segerstrale, Hilleman or Cerny, we'll let you know.

14:59 PST / 22:59 GMT (Phil): There was also a little dive into the evolution of the game controller at one point, with Cerny pointing out that over time the number of buttons on a controller has increased steadily from two, up to 14 - and wondered whether that was a good thing.

But Spector disagreed, saying that he advised against "throwing the baby out with the dishwater" as the industry approached the 'no-button' future heralded by Sony and Microsoft, and pioneered by Nintendo.

Not that he was saying controls like the Wiimote were bad - after all, Epic Mickey is a Wii title - but that it wasn't necessary to discard 30 years of gaming tradition and evolution because motion control was the new talking point.

What struck me as odd about this point - especially given Hilleman's history with flight sim games - was that nobody seemed to factor in the early home computers. Okay, they evolved to use joysticks in the Commodore 64 era, but a lot of games even after that point were based on keyboard controls (remember the keyboard overlays, anybody?) - that's a heck of a lot more than 14 buttons, even back then...

14:45 PST / 22:45 GMT (Phil): Spector was pretty staunch in his support of the genius of the designer throughout - as you'd expect - but most notably as the discussion moved into the analytics argument. With one social games company (which remained nameless) allegedly preferring to hire analysts instead of game designers, there was some talk about the direction in which game design was heading.

There was general consensus that more information about your user base was better than less, but a general question mark over where the line should be drawn.

Probably the quote of the session was Spector's in conclusion to that part of the conversation: "I will quit before I make a game based on analytics," he said, while the talk turned to Richard Garriott's entry into the social space with Portalarium.

Consensus there, led by Hilleman, was that one of Garriott's strengths was that he "loves his audience" a great deal, and would listen to what they said - but ultimately if his creative side disagreed with the data to hand, he'd choose his vision rather than analytics.

Talk of data that tells game companies which colour links people prefer, how many words in a sentence is optimal, and so on, might be useful in honing the 'efficiency' of a game - but my issue with that approach is that ultimately, followed to its logical conclusion, that it would result in every game effectively looking very similar. Letting users effectively dictate game design can definitely yield some benefits, but making decisions based on the most-trodden path won't encourage innovation...

14:38 PST / 22:38 GMT (Phil): There was also some good discussion around Facebook as a platform. Segerstrale, while admitting that nothing lasted for ever, likened the social network to a utility - "people will always need electricity" - but Hilleman pointed out that utilities have a tendency to change pretty quickly.

Specifically, he later concluded, it's actually the community that's the platform, not Facebook, amid some pondering on the nature of that community, and whether there was a danger of it defecting en masse to a different network - how MySpace would like that...

Ultimately Segerstrale pointed out that the trick was to get people to invest time and effort in the games themselves, so that they'd think twice before leaving and taking their friends with them. It made me wonder if there was a commercial value to online trend-setters... how much would a company like Playfish pay to a person that could genuinely make an entire section of his or her network defect from one game to another, or one platform to another?

14:32 PST / 22:32 GMT (Phil): The main thread of conversation that worked its way through most of the session revolved around casual and social gaming - hardly surprising given Segerstrale's presence - and he underlined the impact of the Facebook platform for games by quoting statistics that of the 450 million users on the social network, half of them were playing games there... which is a pretty big pool.

Crucially he attributed some of the success of the sector to a reduction in the barriers to entry for users, citing games there as "a new reason for people to hang out together online."

14:24 PST / 22:24 GMT (Phil): One of the now-established traditions at GDC is David Perry's Lunch with Luminaries, which puts a group of key industry figures together around a table to talk about some pressing topics, and invites a selection of key journalists to watch it unfold.

This year the group included Playfish CEO Kristian Segerstrale, EA CTO Richard Hilleman, Disney VP Warren Spector and design legend Mark Cerny.

The session lasted for over an hour, so I'll add a selection of updates shortly that summarise some of the more interesting things that were said.

13:40 PST / 21:40 GMT (Kath): EA COO John Schappert has addressed the issue of Jason West and Vince Zampella's exit from Infinity Ward and Activision, saying the situation was bad for the industry as a whole.

When asked a question about whether it was a good creative choice for developers to join large publishers, Schappert quipped that maybe not if the publisher likes to litigate. West and Zampella are among the best creative leaders who shouldn't be dealing with litigation and lawyers, he said.

Schappert talked about social gaming too, calling it the latest hot space, but expressing his opinion that the high valuations of some companies might not continue and that many will fall by the wayside.

13:07 PST / 21:07 GMT (Kath): A lively panel discussion on disruptive game platforms from the big players in social gaming has just finished. On it, representatives from Facebook, Crowdstar, Hi5 and PlayStation Home.

It kicked off with a rundown of numbers – Facebook obviously boasting by far the most with 400 million, Hi5 and Crowdstar sitting at around 50 million and 70 million respectively, and Home bringing up the rear with around 12 million.

PlayStation Home's Jack Buser was keen to point out though that numbers aren't the important factor – all of Home's users are gamers who already have a wallet and are familiar with buying digital goods. Additionally, Home's 3D visuals make it the perfect space for strangers to meet, he said – and the panel all agreed that there was a difference between services that connected friends – Facebook – and ones that acted as match-making services for strangers. Sony is able to adopt business practices rapidly – a huge disruption to the console industry, he said; the company has relationships with many developers and the tools are cheap.

Where they didn't all agree was with Facebook's strategy. Hi5's Alex St John called Facebook “confused”. It has millions of people swarming around doing nothing, he noted. It's full of parasitic games spamming users, which – understandably – Facebook is now having to put at arm's length. It's future? Millions of crap games and a few hundred good ones, he said. Hi5 has just announced it will be publishing third-party titles on its service, which he says means developers can concentrate on making good games, not spamming.

Facebook's Gareth Davis came back with response that he was happy Hi5 was now supporting Facebook APIs and that we would now start to see the next generation of Facebook games – it would possibly get its own iconic identity too, like it's own Sonic or Mario.

An enthusiastic round of applause followed St John's next observation – that Zynga was less of a disruptive force in gaming and more a disruptive force in spamming. Perhaps unsurprising, from an audience largely consisting of developers probably tired of hearing how they should be emulating it. Crowdstar's Peter Relan was in agreement - “I have no issue with your statement Zynga has mediocre games, that's fine with me.” Relan had the final word too, noting that the platforms they were arguing about would continue to co-exist regardless of their differing strategies and people's opinions of them.

11.30 PST / 19:30 GMT (Kath): Chris Petrovic, senior VP of GameStop Digital Ventures has responded to the threat of OnLive to retail by saying the service still has a lot to work out - “there are so many dynamics at work,” he pointed out, in a session entitled The Best Disruptive Game Investments Opportunities for 2010 and Beyond. There are relationships with publishers and ways to pay them to sort out, and the company is dealing with publishers who have survived for a long time on one business model. It'll be a long transition, he said, and pieces of hardware will still need to be sold somewhere. They're all discussions being had, he added.

OnLive has created quite a buzz since Perlman's announcement and distribution is what VCs are looking to invest in, not just games, said Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners. Entrepreneurs are always looking for new distribution platforms that are less crowded, he said. Twitter is likely to be where activity moves next, as well as Android and Windows 7 mobile.

10:43 PST / 18.43 GMT (Kath) Big announcement from Steve Perlman, president of OnLive. The service will launch in the US on June 17. Pricing has been confirmed at $14.95 per month for users signing up to a contract - multi-month pricing and special offers will be announced later. The service will kick off for PC and Mac initially. Game sales and rentals will be priced a la carte.

The announcement came following an impressive demo of the service's front end with Unreal Tournament III running flawlessly, and mind-blowing video wall of games and user profiles. The first 25,000 users signing up to OnLive will get three months free, and users will get a range of features for their subscription - including voice chat and access to the full game marketplace. More from OnLive will be shown later today at GDC.

07:53 PST / 15:53 GMT (Phil): Let's kick the US day off with an exclusive, however - I bumped into a very happy Guillaume de Fondaumiere - co-founder of Quantic Dream - last night, who's rightly pleased with the reception of their latest opus, Heavy Rain.

"The mood of the team is pretty high - we've been working for three and a half years to deliver on a very strong promise," he said. "As I always say, reviews are important, sales are even more important, but the most important thing for David [Cage] and I was to deliver on the promise.

"I think this is really something that we've tried hard not to under-deliver on. It's always great when you see the specialised press and the gamers see it and reward it with great reviews on one hand and with good sales on the other. It's a very exciting time.

"I think that Heavy Rain's success is also a very important sign to the industry. There is space for innovation, and we are - to a certain degree - a relatively conservative industry. An industry where it's sometimes difficult to push the boundaries, so whenever there's a success such as Heavy Rain, it fuels a lot of hope for all the people out there who try to do things differently, and try to expand the market."

We'll have more exclusive news from Guillaume next week...

07:40 PST / 15:40 GMT (Phil): Today is GamesBeat day at GDC, so we'll be checking out a bunch of those sessions, including talks featuring Playfish CEO Kristian Segerstrale, EA COO John Schappert, and key execs from ngmoco, Zynga and Popcap. Should prove to be an interesting day.

Later on we'll also be on hand to find out the latest announcements from OnLive - see yesterday's blog entries for what a few people have been saying about the viability of that tech - as well as a Sony press conference, so keep checking back.

03:28 PST / 11:28 GMT (David): Ubisoft Montreal has become the latest studio to sign on with NaturalMotion, makers of euphoria, and their morpheme animation package. Ubisoft won't say what game they're planning to use it with, but apparently it's all part of a "long-term licensing agreement".

Apart from that nugget of information all the rest is cross-company brown-nosing, but as developers try to limit costs wherever possible an off-the shelf animation package certainly makes sense.

Unlike euphoria, morpheme doesn't use dynamic motion synthesis but instead allows for more hands on control of animation. Theoretically this would make it less susceptible to the "Unreal Engine effect", where large scale use of the same middleware begins to turn familiarity into contempt in the minds of some gamers.

03:12 PST / 11:12 GMT (Matt): Over on Eurogamer's Digital Foundry blog, Rich Leadbetter has reported on Epic's Unreal Engine port to the iPhone and iPod Touch. He notes that the Unreal Engine 3 is also running on Linux, Mac, NVIDIA and Tegra 2 platforms – with the latter "potentially very interesting if the Nintendo DS 2 rumours turn out to be true".

Rich concludes that, "It took Epic four man-months of work with a two-man team to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the iPhone, and based on the surprise reveal of Tegra 2 work, it's clear that the company is very interested in bringing its middleware to a wide range of mobile platforms. Asked whether UE3 would be heading to Android, Josh Adams pointedly declined to comment... "

For detailed analysis of the Unreal Engine 3 on iPhone, head over to the increasingly essential Digital Foundry blog.