GDC Day 5

The finale...

An interesting round table with Dan Greenberg and the Anti-Censorship SIG of the IGDA. Some things have been happening... like the ESRB realizing that, holy cow, there's all these mobile and social games that aren't rated by us! By golly, we need to get their money... I mean, rate their products to protect the public! At the same time, as games get global distribution with the click of a mouse, most developers aren't aware of all the different rating systems and regulations in different countries. Australia? Yeah, they're getting really weird Down Under. Dan is starting up a Facebook group, and working on a way to get information about ratings to all interested parties. This is definitely something to be aware of if you're making any kind of electronic game.

I did manage to figure out why some of these game companies are at GDC: they are looking for employees. OK, I get that... but do you really need 4 spaces and an enormous temple-like set-up, free t-shirts and fans and other tchtochkes to attract people for the half-dozen or fewer positions you have? Like they're going to move to China instead of, say, Seattle? Either these companies have more dollars than sense, or they are international pharmaceutical dealers.

Many middleware vendors are promising multiplatform output... write once, push a button and you'll have your software on everything more complicated than a toaster. Hmmm... seems like there's more to multiplatform development than that. Could the marketing guys be overpromising? Do programmers like Doritos?

Since it's the end of a long show and I'm feeling a bit crabby, allow me to vent a little about booth design. I walked by far too many booths where it was not immediately obvious to me what they were selling. Your graphic designer may have told you that the dramatic black backdrop with just your company name was eye-catching, but someone should have told you that not everyone knows who the hell you are or why they should stop and find out. A simple subhead can solve these problems... "A global payment solution that gives you 200 countries to make money from" or "Motion capture cheaper and better than anything else" or some such. At least give me a clue so I know whether I should even waste time asking you what you do. If you don't, you're wasting my time and your money. Double bad.

More detailed thoughts later, after recovery.

GDC Day 3

It's been a long day, as tens of thousands of attendees descend on the Moscone Center. Some interesting data from today's sessions...

Digital Overtakes Analog Distribution. It's happening fast, and sometime this year or next digital distribution of games will amount to more than all the games sold in retail stores. Unfortunately, not all of the old-line publishers seem to have gotten the memo. As Colin Sebastian from Lazard Capital Markets admitted to me, some executives say they understand... but that isn't the way they're spending their money. Hey, well, more business for the rest of us who can see what's happening and don't have the legacy structures to unravel.

Nintendo Still Doesn't Get It. Sad to say, Iwata-san is still complaining about how those cheap games on smartphones devalue real games, and not actually doing anything about it. I think Nintendo's strategy is basically to hope their business recovers because all of those mobile and social games are just a bad dream and someday everyone will wake up and go back to paying $40 for every game. The whole mobile/social explosion is hitting Nintendo especially hard, as they've always been more focussed on less intense gamers. Nintendo announced a few things... a deal with Netflix for streaming movies on the 3DS, free WiFi through AT&T... but nothing that fundamentally changes the market picture for them. Reality: Nintendo may sell 10 or 20 million 3DS units this year... while Apple and Google sell 200 million smartphones or more. And perhaps 100 million tablets on top of that. And then there's Apple TV and Google TV...

Apple TV and Google TV Hit This Year. Colin Sebastian, for one, agrees with me that this is the year Apps hit TV sets, and the impact will be similar to one about 65 million years ago. Similarly, a number of dinosaurs will perish, unable to adapt to the new environment. You think Nintendo's having trouble now, where's the Wii gonna fit in when you can get thousands of games for free on your TV?

The Expo Is... Crowded. All I had time for today was a fast stroll just to take in the atmosphere... which was mostly focussed around the Career Pavilion, but still big crowds everywhere. The basic company booth was MXLPTK, the unpronounceable futuristic name that produces high CPM shaded polygons with a mobile payment system that automatically captures your motions with optimized code. Or something like that, I think. Perhaps I have one or two companies mooshed together. It's been a long day.

Angry Birds Not the Only Ones Angry

Portrait of a physics engine creator?

I wasn't there, but TechCrunch reports an awkward moment at a GDC talk yesterday. While Rovio's CEO Peter Vesterbacka was giving a talk about Angry Birds, a guy stood up during the Q&A session and asked for credit in the game for his physics engine. Seems that Erin Catto did indeed create the engine Rovio used, and while by his own terms they didn't need to credit him (foolish terms, if you ask me), he is miffed they didn't.

Sounds like Rovio will be talking to him about this... they should at least give him some credit, if not a little financial appreciation given the level of success Angry Birds has achieved.