Quick Take: Random reporting from the 2012 Game Developer's Conference

I've been running around the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco the last few days, so I was asked to report what I learned during my session-sit-ins. (Although I suspect the assignment was a Trojan Horse method to prove I haven’t been sitting at home in boxers watching college basketball.)

The Game Developers Conference (or GDC) is an annual, multi-day event where thousands of those responsible for making every type of game imaginable, from social Facebook diversions to AAA blockbusters, come to speak, listen, philosophize, and network during the day, then hit the bars at night.

Each new day brings marathon sessions of talks and panels where developers and those related to the industry address issues associated with the games industry and development.

Here’s what I’ve taken from some of the talks I heard:

"Creative Panic: How Agility Turned Terror Into Triumph," presented by a gang from Double Fine Productions.
Conclusion: The quirky crew at Double Fine ran through the creative process for its Amnesia Fortnight events, where the staff took two weeks off, split into teams, and conceptualized new ideas for smaller games. The results of its experiments spawned successful XBLA and Kinect titles such as Costume Quest, Once Upon A Monster, Iron Brigade, and Stacking. I unfortunately also learned that Costume Quest’s lead designer, Tasha Harris, has sadly left Double Fine to head back to Pixar :(

"GDC Microtalks 2012: One Hour, Ten Voices, Countless Ideas" presented by a bunch of games industry folk including Epic Games’ Cliff Bleszinski and Naughty Dog’s Amy Hennig.
Conclusion: Microtalks rule. The format for the “Microtalks” were like mini-TED talks. Each of the 10 speakers was given a general theme (in this case, relating to time) and allowed around 5 minutes and a limited number of slides to get their point across. A lot of cool stuff came out of this one, but one of the highlights was Naughty Dog’s Amy Henning talking about how the 1941 movie Sullivan’s Travels had a huge influence on the Uncharted series, and that the film’s message— how it’s okay to just entertain people and not take yourself too seriously— can resonate across all forms of media. More on this one here.

"Marketing For Indies: The Indie Games Summer Uprising," presented by Dave Voyles (indiegames-uprising.com)
Conclusion: Even with a large, coordinated marketing effort, it's still hard to sell an Xbox Live Indie game. Voyles detailed the months of planning that went into the Summer Uprising promotion of 2011, which featured 10 XBLIGs, and how the process involved cutting down over 70 submissions. Even with some advertising placement on the Dashboard free of charge from Microsoft, the entire promotion only sold something like 200,000 total. The thing is, that's a successful promotion for XBLIGs, and you can tell that Voyles and his crew worked really hard at pulling the whole thing off. One brighter note was that there did seem to be lot of emphasis on independent game development on a whole at GDC this year, and I'm hoping more indie game developers test the waters of XBLIGs. (Although Cliff Bleszinski did somewhat depressingly encourage indie developers to go the PC route over XBLIGs in his Microtalk. Thanks bud!)

"Awesome Video Game Data," presented by Geoffrey Zatki (EEDAR)
Conclusion: EEDAR does its homework. From the company's research, games have about three months from release to make the bulk of their money and that reviews definitely factor into scores. Also fun facts were presented like; 76-percent of Xbox 360 owners are connected to the internet, around 45,000 iPhone games were released in 2011, and a game with really low review scores can sell more copies with an all-out marketing blitz.

"Why I Hate Women in Games Initiatives," presented by Mare Sheppard (Metanet Software)
Conclusion: Proactive initiatives to include more women in the making of videogames can completely backfire, leading to even more gender segregation, exclusivity, and bias. Sheppard maintains that hiring for games development (and I'm guessing just in general) should be a meritocracy, where someone gets a job based more on their skills then their biological makeup. Really interesting perspective and if you're intrigued here's some more on this talk.

"Don't Shoot the Messenger! Messaging Across the Front Lines," presented by Linda Carlson (Sony Online Entertainment)
Conclusion: Social media managers have really hard jobs. Carlson runs the community management teams at Sony Entertainment Online, which includes monitoring the forums for massively popular MMOs like EverQuest. She described the process of being a community manager as basically communicating feedback from the players to developers and vice versa on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. It’s a 24-hour job, and sounds brutal. Nevermind the trolls.

Sidenotes: There was a energy drink pavillion blasting annoying dance music on a street corner for two straight days that I'm sure neighboring businesses are stoked to see gone...While I didn't see any talks by Rockstar Games here at GDC, the company was here in spirit, through fliers adorning sidewalks and the floors of bathrooms boasting that they're hiring...There was a guy holding a sign outside of one of the main entrances to GDC that read, "God Hates Game Developers," but didn't want to do a stop-and-chat to see if he was serious or not...the demo station for the game Fez was absolutely mobbed everytime I walked by it...GDC's Experimental Gameplay Sessions included a game made exclusively for the Occupy Oakland movement...and a security guard is telling me I gotta go...