To begin things off I’ll recap the excellent time I had at GDC 2011 last week.
\nThis year was the first time I had been to the GDC, but I refused to miss it again for another year.\u00a0 And it was quite the first time indeed.\u00a0 It’s amazing the feel of community that you get from everyone that just wants to make games.\u00a0 There were a number of times where I was sitting there listening to a talk and then got this warm fuzzy feeling.\u00a0 And no it wasn’t when they were handing out free swag.\u00a0 I genuinely felt moved by some of the talks and the feel of being part of something so large.
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I think my favourite talk of the whole week however, was Peter Molyneux’s Populous Post Mortem.\u00a0 I remember playing that game for countless hours as a kid, so it was very interesting to hear some of reasons the game came to be \u2026 by the man himself.\u00a0 Funny thing is the whole nature of his talk seemed to repeat a couple of other talks that I had seen earlier in the week.\u00a0 A lot of the game was simply done by accident.\u00a0 The fun game mechanic of raising and lowering land was originally so that he could get the people out of the houses so they would possibly build bigger ones, instead of having it recognize that there was enough space to grow a hut into something larger.\u00a0 That workaround turned out to be a big part of what made the game so popular, and that eventually lead into a number of god games.\u00a0 Another talk in particular was called “Game Design by Accidents,” and it detailed more about this accidental game development and the idea that a lot of interesting game play mechanics evolve by accident.<\/p>\n
I think these ideas of design by accident lead more into the fact that creating a good game is an art (and no I’m not getting into that battle!).\u00a0 By art I mean something that has some form of creativity and that is not fully imagined until the end.\u00a0 So no real ‘formula’ for creating a success.\u00a0 That’s a scary thought for the business side of things.\u00a0 I kind of believe it’s probably similar to how a clothes designer looks at things.\u00a0 Not from a rigid ‘this is how clothes are made!’ mentality, but from a ‘let’s try this’ attitude.\u00a0 They either come up with a hit for the season\u2026 or not.\u00a0 Large sales are not guaranteed.\u00a0 I believe the ‘formula’ gives you what’s already out there, and what’s safe, and what’s just a casual, bland, every day piece of clothing.\u00a0 The Joe Fresh gaming line?\u00a0 The ‘formula’ doesn’t push conceptual boundaries, and it doesn’t add anything particularly new.\u00a0 But I do think the ‘formula’ can give polish over what’s already there, and\/or mass appeal.\u00a0 Although it can definitely be profitable, I think going that route peels away a lot of what’s fun and exciting about making games.\u00a0 More importantly for me and what I would like to do in the future, I don’t think the ‘formula’ does enough to push boundaries.\u00a0 Maybe I just haven’t found the right ‘chaos formula’ though \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
Anyways, GDC was a bunch of days of awesome talks, which I wish I could still do more of (I plan on taking full advantage of the Vault to see the awesome ones I missed), and then lots of socializing and business opportunities.\u00a0 There were a couple of downsides however.\u00a0 The week prior I was actually in Honduras helping to build a school with All Access Volunteers<\/a>.\u00a0 Had a fantastic time!\u00a0 On the last day of the trip we were out on the islands, and I made a rookie mistake and forgot to use suntan lotion on the feet.\u00a0 The burn was BAD!\u00a0 So bad in fact that my feet had swollen up to the point that I couldn’t even fit them into my shoes.\u00a0 Luckily I had big worker boots I brought down with me, and so I was limping around most of the week at GDC in big steel toed boots.\u00a0 At least no one was gonna step on my feet while shimmying down a row of seats.\u00a0 The second thing that I found to be a bummer was the fact that talking to people on the show floor took up so much time!\u00a0 I had all the talks I wanted to see planned out, but that changed quickly after visiting the floor for the first time late Wed. afternoon.\u00a0 I realized there were so many booths I had to check out to see what kind of business opportunities were awaiting me.\u00a0 Needless to say, I didn’t hit many more talks.\u00a0 So only two real downsides isn’t too bad right?\u00a0 They were definitely offset by the upsides though!<\/p>\n Quick note: Swag == awesome! and\u00a0 (Google && Intel) == awesome.\u00a0 Thanks to both these companies I walked away with 2 new development tablets!\u00a0 A brand new Motorola Xoom, and a pre-release Intel Meego ExoPC Slate.\u00a0 Let’s start with the Xoom.\u00a0 Everyone in one of the Google talks I went to received either a grey or a green card.\u00a0 People with a green card were given Xooms and people with grey cards were given Samsung Nexus S devices.\u00a0 I received a Xoom and trust me my face was bright with glee!\u00a0 Who doesn’t like new toys?\u00a0 I actually do a lot of Android development on the side but I wasn’t planning on focussing the games towards the Android market for 2 reasons: one, I’m still hesitant whether I can make it profitable to support the market (it doesn’t really follow the same rules as the iOS market), and two, I don’t have any test devices myself.\u00a0 Well #2 is out of the way now, and I figure if I can make my game engines and tools to be cross platform right from the beginning then it makes moving to the Android market extremely easy.\u00a0 So I just need to find a way to make things profitable.\u00a0 So good work Google, you just gained a new game developer because of your gift!\u00a0 Thank you!\u00a0 Even better that it was a tablet, because I think I’m going to try to focus more on tablet games, and I’ll go more into why in the future.<\/p>\n Intel also handed out new tablets to everyone that joined one of their developer talks at a nearby hotel (it wasn’t actually a GDC event, but they took advantage of a good thing).\u00a0 They also gave a talk on MeeGo and their version of the app store (AppUp).\u00a0 It seemed like an interesting app store, but definitely in its infancy.\u00a0 It does sound like it’s picking up speed at least.\u00a0 MeeGo on the otherhand is a mixed bag as anyone who knows anything about Nokia and the WP7\/MeeGo debacle would surely agree.\u00a0 I like the fact that it’s Qt, but I’m no longer certain whether it will have as prosperous a life on mobiles as it could have.\u00a0 Either way I will now be looking into whether it’s possible to easily port any games to MeeGo as well.\u00a0 Again, if I make things with these platforms in mind, then it makes portability in the future a breeze, and expands possible markets which is a big win!\u00a0 Unfortunately, I think the software on the tablet is almost ‘too’ pre-release to really begin developing for.\u00a0 I’m hoping by the time I get to the point where I have to look at actual having device testing Intel will have an update for the firmware\/software and things will function smoother.\u00a0 The device itself is slick looking and super wide if you ask me.\u00a0 Here’s the Windows 7 variant<\/a>.\u00a0 I am a little curious about the atom processor as well and it’s performance in comparison with typical mobile chips these days.\u00a0 Guess we’ll find out soon enough!\u00a0 Either way thank you Intel for the new devel device.\u00a0 I will be sure to look into things more.<\/p>\n