Shards

The People Factor

New GDCTV video up today Nicole Lazzaro's "Why We Play Games Together: The People Factor"

Wow, this is excellent stuff. Not only does Nicole have a great presence and delivery, but she's presenting some really interesting research. For a games designer with a mechanics focus, like myself, this kind of research and opinion/advice is infinitely useful in evaluating products and features and deciding whether we're providing our users with the experience we want to give them.

Top Stuff

Will Wright hits the nail on the head

Gamasutra has an interesting feature up that present some fascinating tidbits from a panel featuring some of the world's foremost game designers.

I think that there are a couple of stand-out quotes, both by Will Wright:

“But ultimately, at the end of the day, game design is an intuitive black art, just like in any other field. There's a certain amount of game design possibilities that will forever be unknown, and that keeps things exciting.”

It also gives us designers hope that we might be the one to hit on one of those yet undiscovered nuggets of perfection.

Also:

“I'm still convinced that the best way to draw in female gamers is to hire more female designers,”

Now this is a hefty chunk of truth! No matter how "comprehensive" the research from our marketing people, there's no way that a team is going repeatedly create games with true cross-gender and mass-market appeal without that representative mix of opinions in the mix.

Tipping point?

Yet more calls for the games industry to broaden its scope and appeal to a wider market rather than just the traditional 16-30 male.

Okay, so I suspect that Mr Lowenstein's motivations for this preaching are more profit driven than through any genuine concern about inclusivity, but it's probably true that only the money men will be able to make the decisions about any future path for the industry.

Sadly, it feels like we're still not going anywhere. Every few weeks we hear from someone that we're in a mass market industry, that we're not just about the hardcore, that we're out to appeal to a broad cross-section of the population. But although our hardware is starting to learn from areas such as consumer electronics (360 vs iPod anyone?), I'm not sure that game design or production is on anything like the same wavelength.

So how can we solve this? How can we reach the tipping point where our past-time and passion opens up and truely hits home into the collective conciousness? Shouldn't this be what we're talking and reading about, rather than just producing our own individual rants that bemoan the short-sightedness of others?

Hmm..

There is another..

And lo, barely 2 days after EGN falls by the wayside, another event emerges to try and fill the trade show vacuum.

Taking place over the same days as GDCE, "Games Market Europe" will be held at the London Business design centre. They sound like they're trying to keep costs down as best they can, and so try to avoid the alienation and apathy of companies who obviously didn't want to support ECTS, EGN or GS Live. Sounds sensible to me, and offers some hope that we're not dead yet!

2nd is nowhere, 3rd is everywhere?

So Nintendo are taking a different approach to this upcoming generation of video game console hardware.

Whilst Sony and Microsoft duke it out in the battle of the 'flops' and bump maps, Nintendo has decided to occupy what some would call "3rd place". Personally, I disagree, if Nintendo get it right and produce an affordable console that features a healthy stock of good(!) games, then they could well win a position as the "second console".

Sure, most people are going to want to own one of either the 360 or PS3, how else are they going to show off to their mates that they've got the lushest graphics. But, with those two systems looking to occupy such a similar space, I'm left thinking that the number of people who will have the Revolution as their second system will be considerably greater than those who own both a 360 and a PS3. Especially when the revolution will offer access to Nintendo's much loved back catalogue and also probably provide a link between the DS and the online world.

So, not a victory, but I'd say that there'll be profit from coming 3rd...

EGN joins the zombie horde

So EGN has gone the way of ECTS and Game Stars Live into a state of games show torpor. So what's left for the UK games jobber who's looking for an opportunity to schmooze with their fellow geeks?

First up to bat is the Women in Games 2005 conference on the 8th, 9th and 10th of August at the University of Aberay in Dundee. They have some interesting keynote speakers, and an overall theme that's definately of interest, but I'll be waiting to see what sort of talks and workshops will be on offer before I book that particular trip.

Next is the EIEF on the 11th and 12th of the same month, which sounds like it's styling itself as the logical alternative to EGN & GS Live. Not that this is a bad thing, and some of the elements of the announced conference programme definately pique my interest.

Finally (it seems), there is GDCE, seemingly at a new location, between30th August and 1st Sepember. This is the last bastion of the traditional UK summer games conferences, and I'll be interested to see what they've got planned when their info goes live on 6th June.

I'll admit to ignorance of any other similar events on continental Europe, but even so, these three have a good deal to prove in their role as leading lights of the UK games development calendar.