GDC Roundup: Day Three
Awards, awareness and the birth of subscription based game engine licensing
Hang on to your hand sanitiser, today was the day that GDC went into hyperdrive. Session packed days were followed by party filled nights, with the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival recognising great work and developers brandishing turkey legs in selfies from dark bars.
GamesIndustry International went hands on with the star of the show so far, the Sony Project Morpheus virtually reality headset. Our writer was impressed, and dev kits could start going out to developers as early as next month. "You have to be a PS4 developer, but other than that, anyone who has a passion for VR and communicates their ideas to us, we're open to that." (GamesIndustry International)
The Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival took place last night, with The Last of Us and Papers, Please taking home the top prizes. The IGF Audience Award went to The Stanley Parable. (GamesIndustry International)
Manveer Heir's talk Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where do video games stand? was given to a packed room and received a standing ovation. It was a call to arms to the development community to address societal prejudices and change the industry for the better. "Let's not be scared to ruffle feathers and let's be open and honest about our intentions. Let's push and engage in a new discourse as a result of these dynamics. And let's do all of this because what we are currently doing is absolutely not working." (GamesIndustry International)
Both Epic and Crytek chose GDC as the platform to launch subscription based services for thier engines. Crytek is offering a $10 per month "Engine-as-a-Service" program for the CryEngine, while the Unreal Engine service costs a $19 monthly fee and 5 per cent of gross revenues. (GamesIndustry International)
In Is Your Business Model Evil? The Moral Maze of the New Games Business Ben Cousins offered free-to-play developers a scorecard of ethics and suggested crowdsourced, subscription and arcade games were actually less ethical than freemium titles. (GamesIndustry International)
Jiro Dreams of Game Design saw Brenda Romero compared game development to Michelin standard cooking. "Imagine earning game of the year, and you can lose it the next year," she said "I'm attracted to the greatness I see in these chefs." (Gamasutra)
Facebook's Aaron Brady dropped some hot statistics during his talk Economies Unite! Cross-Platform Monetization and Player Retention, including that 375 million people play Facebook-connected games each month. (GigaOm)
The Classic Game Postmortem was a must see for Shenmue fans as Yu Suzuki (translated by Mark Cerny no less) shared stories about the development of the 1999 Sega Dreamcast title. "It's frightening to think we managed this project basically by pushing around pieces of paper," he admitted of the project management style. (Polygon)