Well I suggested to Steve at GDC that at least a 2 or 3 hour would be good. Full day sounds even better

Perhaps if the groups get too large (even 15 active speakers may be a bit much for a good discussion) that the groups break up into smaller work-groups.

- - -

Might be fun to have an ''It Came From GDC'' paper written after each GDC describing briefly a wacky new idea that comes out of discussion groups.



regards,

GeniX

www.cryo-genix.net

quote:Original post by GeniX
Well I suggested to Steve at GDC...

Damnit! I''m trying to figure out who you are! This is killing me!



Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Yeah, I went there in an effort to find out... but I am horrible with names. I would likely recognize the face. *sigh*

Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote:Original post by Chris Hargrove
Cool, someone else here has read Keirsey. Yeah, I''ve done a bit of research into psychology and personality/temperament stuff; it''s a definite benefit when designing believable game AI.

A bit of reading? Laurie (my wife) gave me ENTP license plates for my birthday - I responded a month later with INFJ ones for her. Yeah, we know it inside out.



Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote:Original post by Chris Hargrove
I went to many of the AI roundtables this year, and was admittedly one of the "more vocal" people that some of you are referring to. Without being accused of wanting to "take over" this thread too, I would like to offer two small points in self-defense.

One, it is the roundtable moderator''s job to rein in the conversation if he/she thinks it is getting out of hand; any failure to do so can easily make the participants think that everything is going just fine.

Two, even with our very vocal minority, there were plenty of situations in every single session I was in where the conversation significantly lulled. Any of the non-vocal majority who wanted to jump in at those times could have easily done so, but for the most part they did not. Heck, they didn''t even have to jump in; just raising a hand would''ve sufficed, but that still didn''t happen most of the time. If most people want to spend most of their time at a roundtable just listening, that''s fine, but that means that a few people have to do a whole lot of the talking to make up for it, and that''s exactly what happens. Roundtables are discussions, not lectures.

Next time, if you don''t want only a small number of folks holding the conch all the time, raise your hand and hold it for yourself once in a while.

Chris makes a good point. I think that many of the folks who are new to the roundtables and/or GDC don''t feel like they can hop in enough. When I''ve talked to them offline they usually are so new that they don''t want to "seem dumb" or "ask stupid questions", but that''s part of the point of a roundtable of course--to talk about things. There really aren''t any dumb questions, IMO.

I didn''t really think you got too out of line or anything Chris--your points were all good and thoughtful. As Dave says you brought up some great topics. Heck, I had one session a couple of years back where virtually all the talking was done by Will Wright...and frankly nobody cared, because everybody wanted to hear about The Sims .





Ferretman

ferretman@gameai.com

From the High Mountains of Colorado

GameAI.Com

quote:Original post by GeniX
Well I suggested to Steve at GDC that at least a 2 or 3 hour would be good. Full day sounds even better

Perhaps if the groups get too large (even 15 active speakers may be a bit much for a good discussion) that the groups break up into smaller work-groups.

We did indeed talk about it, and several folks besides yourself suggested it, as it turned out.

While I think an all day session would be too much in a roundtable format for the reasons Dave mentions, doing a half-day session could work with a break or two in between. Alexander Nareyek has done very well with 2-hour sessions to work through the IGDA AI SIG issues; perhaps we can do this too. I'll talk to the guys about it.

What other suggestions do you guys have? This is a great time, frankly, to consider changes to the way we are doing the roundtables.

quote:

Might be fun to have an 'It Came From GDC' paper written after each GDC describing briefly a wacky new idea that comes out of discussion groups.

GeniX

www.cryo-genix.net

We've sort of done that with our Moderator's reports after each GDC. Neil and Eric have actually already done theirs for the 2004 sessions (they're on my site, while mine is still in progress.

A couple of years back we were talking heavily about doing a "Tales from the Roundtable" book on things that have cropped up over the years...perhaps it's time to consider this again? Would anybody out there be interested in something like that?




Ferretman

ferretman@gameai.com

From the High Mountains of Colorado

GameAI.Com


[edited by - Ferretman on April 20, 2004 12:40:34 AM]

quote:Original post by InnocuousFox

I actually submitted a proposal for a lecture that covered personality types and game design. It didn''t get through... this year!

I didn''t know you submitted a proposal like that, Dave--did you mention that to me? If you did I apologize for spacing it...sounds like a neat idea to me. You should resubmit it again for next year!

quote:

@Ferretman ... have you guys floated the idea of having an all day AI roundtable? There is far too much to discuss in one hour. We are usually just getting going by the end of the hour... and then the next day there is a different mix of people. If you were to disquise it as an all-day tutorial, it would be great. Break the day up into some different sections by type of AI, select some people to do some presentations on cutting edge work they have done, then open it up to discussion for a while on that topic. That way, there is some structure to the day and it doesn''t just wander... but it isn''t strictly a series of lectures or a panel discussion either.

My biggest problem with an all-day thing like you suggest is that it gets awfully big. The IGDA sessions where people break up into a dozen sub-groups comes to mind, and I''m not sure all that much ever really gets accomplished there. Still, the focus would be different for our stuff so that''s not without merit...we''d be talking about all kinds of stuff not trying to formulate policy.

Question: Are there enough AI people in the industry to reasonably drive one of these all-day things? A lot of folks don''t show up for the first couple of days so I''m worried about attendance....

quote:
By making it a tutorial (as defined by GDC), there is an extra cost for attending it - but that also makes sure that it is the attendees are either real AI programmers or people who are serious about getting into it.

True...good points.

quote:
Damnit... we all bitch about how AI isn''t getting the attention it deserves - and yet the graphics guys get all day sessions to do stuff. Why not the AI folks?

I think there''s a lot of value in what you''re suggesting, though we''d definitely need to line up a couple more folks to help with the break-into-groups moderation. Hmmmmmm.....




Ferretman

ferretman@gameai.com

From the High Mountains of Colorado

GameAI.Com

quote:Original post by InnocuousFox

quote:Original post by GeniX
Well I suggested to Steve at GDC...

Damnit! I''m trying to figure out who you are! This is killing me!

Heheheheheh...I know who he is....





Ferretman

ferretman@gameai.com

From the High Mountains of Colorado

GameAI.Com