GDCE Day 2: Conference Day 1

Keynote Session: Electronic Arts

The opening session on Wednesday was a talk by Rory Armes from EA's European studio, rather than Bruce McMillan as originally advertised. However, the session was entertaining as he claimed he was a 'Canadian Cattle Rancher' and an 'Independent Developer' despite working directly for the largest game publishing company in the world...

He started off with the prediction that the Europe rather than the US would be the driving force behind the next generation of games. While there may have been an element of audience ego stroking here, EA certainly seems to be prepared to put it's money where it's mouth is. EA are apparently planning to recruit a large number of new developers, increasing the size and number of their own studios as well as the number of developers under the EA Partners program.

EA also seem very keen developing their own IP rather than licenses. Armes suggested that by next year, the only externally owned IP EA would be working with would be the Harry Potter license. He also mentioned a little sorely the risks of licensed tie ins, using the failure of Catwoman as an example. As he said, "If the movie sucks, no one cares about the game".

He went on to cast a critical eye over some of EA's previous games as he ran through his list of 'Six things I know about Game Development'. These were:

1. Never underestimate the universal joy of blowing stuff up

It may sound rather shallow, but there's a certain element of truth to it. There will always be a place for simple mindless fun in games. This item also provided an opportunity to show off a trailer for the forthcoming Burnout 3 game, a racing game packed with things to crash into and blow up.

2. Nobody likes getting their ass kicked

Armes briefly mentioned a selection of games that fell foul of being too hard or too impenetrable, as well as some that were just too easy. He also cited Burnout 3 as an example of a game where the difficulty of the play is not too important - even if you're hopeless at it, you can still have fun. His overall point was that the designer's job is not to beat the player, but to ensure that he enjoys the game.

3. The first three minutes are critical

The beginning of the game really does count. Armes mentioned the tendency of designers to save the best stuff for last - but in reality, perhaps it would be better at the beginning, where more people will see it?

4. How many people are working on cool stuff?

Armes broke down the importance of various elements as follows: 60% gameplay, 20% presentation, 15% depth, and finally 5% cool stuff - yet all too often developers spend a disproportionate amount of resources developing extra features that serve little purpose.

5. Never say Never

This provided an opportunity to show off another trailer, this time for Def Jam, a beat-em-up style game that will end EA's moratorium on mature rated games.

6. Stop worrying about the business and get back to making great games

This is perhaps easier said than done for smaller developers, but ultimately his point was that developers should focus at what they're best at, and let the games sell themselves.

Keynote Session: When the Barriers come Tumbling Down

Hosted by Tim Christian of Media Forensics, this session explored the future of game development. Peter Molyneux of Lionhead and Karl Jeffery of Climax represented the developers, while Rory Armes (EA) filled in for the absent Mike Gamble (THQ) on behalf of the big publishers. (despite his continued objections that he's an independent developer) Finally Seamus Blackley of CAA was available his input on the industry from a Hollywood perspective.

A core theme of the session was comparing the game industry to the movie industry. The movie industry is well known for it's profitability and success - whereas the gaming industry, although larger, is struggling somewhat, with many developers and publishers going out of business. Seamus' job is to use his experience in Hollywood to help the game industry mature into a more stable and lucrative state. He compared the talent in the game industry favourably to that in Hollywood, noting that "The guys in Hollywood spend two or three years developing a couple of hours of storyline; you guys spend the same amount of time developing forty hours of storyline".

Blackley went on to talk about the ability of people in the industry to recognize a good idea when they see it, and he felt that this ability was lacking in the game industry. "[Hollywood producers] can take a screenplay and tell whether or not some writer is awful or an idiot or has some sort of bizarre taste for gophers or something… And I can tell you quite honestly that with very, very few exceptions, it's hard to find anyone like that today in a position of power who has the ability to green light something." Jeffery noted the increasing need for developers to have a working prototype or some work already complete on the project to be able to sell the game to a publisher.

Molyneux also mentioned the importance of hanging on to your own IP, and the value of sequels. While he pointed out that several years ago, you'd be embarrassed to write a sequel, the value of creating a strong franchise is enormous, to both the developer and the publisher.

The need to streamline development was emphasised, in order to make maximum use of the individual developers on the project. It was noted that while a movie's credits may contain a long list of names, not all those people would necessarily be working on the project at the same time - some would be involved with the initial stages, and then move on to another project once the next stage of the project begins. Development times are also an ever-present problem, and Molyneux made it known that even well established developers such as Lionhead need to work on this problem.

Single Platform vs. Multi-Platform Development

Unfortunately I only caught the end of this seminar, again in the discussion panel format, but this time with Olivier Goguel of Argonaut, Dave Ranyard of SCEE, and David Braben of Frontier Development. However, a small crowd gathered around David Braben at the end of the seminar, so I joined in to try and get an idea of what had gone on in the rest of the session.

The key issue in the talk was not so much related to platform specific programming, but the issue of resource scalability; Obviously different platforms have different capabilities, and the objective is to ensure that the sound effects, models and textures etc. are the best they can be on any given platform. Frontier seems to have developed a good solution to this problem in the use of their own set of tools for resource management, as well as a 'virtual OS' that can be used to test out behaviour in a completely platform independent environment. Although these tools are currently proprietary, Braben suggested that he might consider licensing some of these tools to other developers.

Of course, we couldn't let Braben go without someone asking about a new Elite game, and Braben seemed more than happy to confirm that it's very much in the pipeline…

Graphics For Dynamic Game Worlds

Presented by David Dow of the Lionhead Satellite company Intrepid Games, this session discussed how they approached the task of creating a highly dynamic game world in the forthcoming game BC.

Unfortunately Dow seemed a little uncomfortable giving the presentation, and it came across as a bit unrehearsed and stilted. The demo itself was certainly impressive though, showing off the stylised prehistoric terrain of the game world.

Intrepid have taken a slightly different approach to texturing in BC. Artists often use highlights and shadows in the diffuse texture maps to make a model look more detailed. However, BC's day/night cycle means that the direction and strength of the light is not fixed, so adding detail in this manner would simply look odd. Instead, Intrepid have opted for very simple diffuse texture maps, and used geometry for detail where possible, and bump mapping almost everywhere else. This means that the models look right regardless of the position of the sun, and gives the engine a very solid look and feel that works very well with the prehistoric styling of the terrain and models.

Fable: The Art of Combat

Joss Moore and Dean Finnegan of Big Blue Box (Another of Lionhead's Satellite companies) presented the final session of the day, discussing the development of Fable's combat system. The talk concentrated on solving the problem of animating combat without harming gameplay.

Combat is an important element of many RPG's, and Fable it seems is no exception. However, Big Blue Box have attempted to find a compromise between the simplicity and accessibility of 'point and click' style combat and a more complex interactive system more like those commonly used in beat-em-up style games. They key problem they faced was animating the combat smoothly without making it feel unresponsive - once the initial set of animations were added, they found that triggering an attack left the player out of control while the animation played out.

The problem was solved by storing notes in the animation files that indicate the start and end of valid interruption points. These are parsed by the game engine and allow it to prevent the player from initiating a new action until the next interruption point is met. These interruption points are chosen by the animators to ensure that the flow to the next move is seamless. This mechanism proved essential to the gameplay, as it allowed a greater level of depth to be added to combat, introducing parrying moves and the ability to change targets mid combat when engaging multiple foes.

Day 3