Comments on: GDC ’08 Brain Dump, Part Two

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:23:52 +0000

Editor? What that?

By: Testicular Torsion

Testicular Torsion — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:32:03 +0000

I ate some pizza and deep-fried dumpings

Fire your editor.

By: elias

elias — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:19:43 +0000

For the curious about the CCP party, James Portnow has his recounting of it here.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:08:03 +0000

Mods have a lot of traffic on their own (Moddb is a v popular website) but interest has slowed. I think the truely talented folks are going straight for the indie game scene now, hence the expansion there.

By: Ging

Ging — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:24:44 +0000

E3 never really went away – last year it changed name to the E3 Media and Business Summit and went invite only. I seem to remember there being not a lot of interesting stuff coming out of it.

The “mod scene” isn’t exploding, teams are taking longer to make bigger, more ambitious mods that generally don’t see the light of day.

By: terry

terry — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:51:00 +0000

So was the rheumy-eyed old man Peter Molyneux?

By: Dinger

Dinger — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:34:59 +0000

Point taken. E3 is back this year. And I assume all the big industry players will be there, along with RPS providing live blogging, cool summaries, and interviews.

In a related note, Google tells me there was a West Coast Computer Fair in 2006 (not sure about 2007) — in fact, there was a continuous series of them for over a decade past 1984.

In any case, looks like you’ve got a lot of good work to do. Looking forward to it.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:45:26 +0000

Actually I think E3 is back this year, albeit in reduced form.

By: Dinger

Dinger — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:21:05 +0000

GDC is not E3. E3 is no more. The press and the PR types need a venue where they can make a splash and get exposure. Read through the various articles coming out of the GDC: there’s a lot of buzz. Enough buzz that, were I marketing type, I would have a strategy in place.

“User-generated content” has been the saviour of games for some time. Does anyone know what the actual state of things is? Are people making XLNA games that are worth playing? Is the “mod scene” exploding, or are we seeing fewer mod projects every year? How much of Second Life really benefits from UGC outside of the fields related to sex, [gambling] and scams? For that matter, at what point will we stop distinguishing between UGC and multiplayer interaction?

By: Feet

Feet — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:27:05 +0000

I guess I’m getting my games conferences mixed up. :) It’s certainly seems like an exciting time anyways.

By: Meat Circus

Meat Circus — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:18:59 +0000

@Feet:

Well, look at what Sony announced at GDC ’07: Home and LittleBigPlanet, two interesting and forward-looking projects of the sort I’d like to see more of.

Hardly a “fog of multiple MASSIVE FRANCHISE SEQUEL ANNOUNCEMENT OMG fervour”.

GDC is by developers for developers. It’s not the old E3, which was by coke-addled PR people for undersexed teenage boys.

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:18:38 +0000

Hard to say. That’s too much of a hypothetical, I think. I’d imagine the big three will be back in a blaze of user-created content next year, however.