November 30, 2007

Recap of Ernest Adams talk

Ernest gave a great talk at RPI last night. If you missed it, you can still check out the slides for the talk on his website and a real audio recording from the same talk he made at GDC 2007.

Slides from Ernest Adams talk last night can be seen on his website here: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/Rethinking/rethinking.htm

Real Audio from this lecture is also available: http://realserver.earthlink.net/~www.designersnotebook.com/Media/Rethinking.rm

All the rest of his lectures can be found here: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/lectures.htm

27 people (including Steve Okimoto from Nintendo of America) joined us after for food and drinks at Holmes and Watson in downtown Troy.

At the lecture

Kathleen Ruiz, Ernest Adams and Marc Destefano

Hanging out at Holmes and Watson after Ernest's talk

Ernest gives his final farewell

Posted by IanStead at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2007

Meeting Report: Wednesday, September 12, 2007

IGDA Meeting Minutes by Casey O'Donnell
Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Welcome - Ian Stead
IGDA and IGDA Board - Tobi Saulnier
Introduction - Jamey Stevenson
Gameplay Metrics for a Better Tomorrow - Darius Kazemi
(Full Slides Available Here)

Welcome according to Ian Stead. First, announcements. We have comment forms, please fill them out. Darius makes a joke about metrics on his talk on metrics.

Introductory Comments by Tobi Saulnier on the goings ons of Board of Directors and the IGDA overall:

Lots of teleconferences and meetings. Programs and memberships committee has been trying to better coordinat with members. Part of this effort has been incorporating chapters into the decision making processes. They have also been looking at a new web solution for the IGDA. Currently it is a hodge-podge, and they are hoping to replace with a more robust solution. More organized. Should there be members only content? Re-negotiating with CMP with respect to GDC and Game Developer Magazine. IGDA and CMP used to be joined at the hip. GDC moved to February. Choice awards. Attempting to continue moving apart from CMP. Annual meeting may disconnect from CMP. Awards should focus on people and teams, rather than games or publishers. GDC call for papers are going right now. Deadline is October 1st.

Introduction to Darius by Jamey Stevenson, Darius is a "metrics mastermind". Worked for Turbine, D&D Online, and Lord of the Rings Online. Officer for IGDA Education SIG.

Darius Kazemi - Orbus Gameworks - darius@orbusgameworks.com

Considers himself a data geek. D&D Online (DDO) and Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). Now part of Orbus Gameworks. They build game-play metrics middle-ware. The scope is game-play metrics. Measuring what people do in a game.

Metrics is part science. You collect hard numbers. I like metrics because I hate focus groups. "People lie. Don't trust them." I like to have hard numbers with witch to work. It is also part art, because you're interpreting the numbers. Objective observations in opposition to subjective interpretation. You have to tease the information out of the numbers through "intuitive" analysis.

Why should I collect game-play metrics?
How do I collect metrics the right way?
What can I do with metrics?

2 things. 1.) Relational database. 2.) Reporting system.

DB's versus Log files. I hate log files. The only down file to a DB is the higher learning curve. However, they are flexible, relational, and you can run queries on them.

You have to have a really fast reporting system. DDO and LotRO. We had a database for DDO, but not a good fast reporting system. Netcharts. Fast reporting front end is really important. What good is data without ...

Most important slide. Design <-> Analyst <-> Programmer.

Wrong way to build a metrics system. What should we look at? What are we gonna record? "You, designer, what do you want to record?"

Way to build a metrics question is iterative and through questions. The "designer" is a person who wants to know something. What are the top five things you would like answered? I'd like to know about X. I'd like to know Y. Analyst takes ownership of the database. Works with the customer or designer. You have to sit with the designer, and sketch out what they're really looking for. The analyst takes that and specs what they need to record to get an idea of what the DB needs to have in it. Takes that over to the programmer and says, you have to help me get this data via hooks in the game code.

Start with one good question and you'll move to more and more questions.

Managers say, "Wow, that's cool. I want more."

There are tons of questions you can ask about your game, but there are really only a few that are the right questions to ask. You have to look at your core game design and think about what the best three questions are to ask about your game.

An MMO Example:

1.) Population - constantly updating what the status of your population is. You can keep a history in the background. It forms the foundation for other things.

2.) Items -

3.) Combat - Start simple by only keeping track of which members of the population.

4.) Economy and Trade

You don't want to track things that are "throw away."

Social Networks - Networks are easy to store. You have edge tables. It ends up being simple, because it's a relational database.

"Community event" - Piece of information you want to propagate. Send a blanket email. Spam people. 5% response. Post to your forums. People on there are more likely to join in. You can find connection points between networks, and the information will propagate very quickly. Understanding the topology of your social network.

Prefuse - Free graph visualization tool.

Economy and social networks - Linking your Trade and Item tables. Oooh.

Hunting down gold farmers.

Average value of an item in trade on your system. Street value versus

In-game advertising - Where are people hanging out / looking in a game? Visualization based on Quake 3.

Get a profile of what people who leave the game. Might help you identify aspects of a game that people don't like. Integration with a billing system helps.

Q/A (Bug Hunting) - Looking for outliers. Email this developer any time this thing happens more than 80% of the time. Caught a ton of bugs just by looking at data from a beta. 90% of people abandon this question.

Customer Service - If you know what they have been up to.

Billing - Integrating with a billing system.

Network Operations - Sanity check our in game and performance networks. Yes/no our servers are maxed out when lots of people are on. For sanity checks.

Question and Answer:

1.) Standardized log file? W3C log files. Data conforming to design of game. If you've got web log reporting networks, then generating data that fits that might be a nice easy start.

2.) Middleware - Describe you data. Generates API. Plug into game.

3.) How do you look at the numbers and ascribe agency? You can bridge the qualitative and quantitative data with surveys or other metrics. You can do it on the forums.

Posted by casey at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2007

Meeting Report: Tuesday, May 22, 2007

More Photos

IGDA Meeting Minutes by Casey O'Donnell
Tuesday, May 22
Colin Wilkinson - Senior Designer, 1st Playable Productions on Puzzle Quest: Co-development for the Handheld Market

Minute Taker's Notes: Colin had a nice set of slides which I'm hoping we can post here soon. Screen shots of early versions of Puzzle Quest both on the PC and DS gave a nice visualization of how much the game has transitioned through this process.

Colin was given a brief introduction by Joe Cecot, a former co-worker from Vicarious Visions. Colin is now a Producer and Senior Designer at 1st Playable, and was the Producer/Designer for Puzzle Quest on Nintendo DS. He has worked in the game industry for the last eight years shipping numerous titles on an array of devices. Most recently he has been focused on the DS.

He began talking about how the task of taking a game from the PC to the DS. Puzzle Quest was released in March of this year. The PC demo of the game had shown up at the 1P office, complete with untuned game-play and early artwork. Their interest in the game was particularly in a "new original game which scopes to various play session lengths." It was an opportunity to build on and improve existing technology. It was also an opportunity to work on a game that everyone wanted to work on, not to mention that "working on a game meant free copies."

They wanted everything to use the touch screen. They wanted a game that anyone could pick up and play, and that all necessary information was available to the user at all times. No need to flip through numerous screens and sub screens. An "RPG has lots to display," but they also didn't want to cut any features.

The first chore of course was moving from the PC to the DS, two platforms with very different specifications:

DS: 16MB Rom - 4MB Ram and 656 KB Vram - 4Kb EEProm
PC Demo Specs: 90MB Installer - 256MB RAM and 64MB VRAM - HDD Saves

They began by scaling the artwork down from the PC to the DS. The PC had used huge TGA ("TARGA") textures files. They did a lot of compressing down, scaling, removing of character directions that would be unnoticeable on the DS screen.

The second issue was that on the PC the LUA ("Lua") files were all loaded on startup. "We can't do that." They switched to a load on demand system. Lua was used for just about everything. XML was their data storage format and LUA their scripting language. The DS's simplified memory system was where they spent a lot of technical time.

The UI provided the single most important and time consuming aspect of the project. They did an extensive series of mock ups of screens on the DS. Moved lots of things around. They spent nearly a month or month and a half working on this aspect of the project. Attempting to figure out what you've got and what you're going to need to do. Later in the development cycle they encountered issues related to compression and the UI.

Designers looked at what many other games were doing and how they had been reviewed. What could they learn from those games that had come before them? The limitation of two 256x192 screens was a complex issue to work around. The main goal they decided was that the Puzzle Screen needed to take over the entire screen. The same ought to be true of the map screen. Ensure that the player has as much room as possible to work with those aspects of the game.

Since the release of the game, they've been happy to see other games making use of some of their design decisions, like the use of the DS shoulder buttons to swap to top and bottom screens.

Because the game was entirely stylus controlled, and they were working along with the PC guys, they found that the stylus was nothing like the mouse code on the PC. It somehow left the game feeling lifeless. Lots of time was spent fine tuning the touch screen.

Colin then talked a bit about the audiences that the game was being targeted at, two largely different audiences. Puzzle Gamers and RPG Gamers. They wanted the game to appeal to all of them, not simply those who were both. For the most part DS users have been interested in lots of different things, and willing to experiment with new concepts.

One of the major design changes that was made early on was that the PC demo had only male characters. The game needed female avatars. They also wanted to ensure that players were not being kept from the action. Ian relayed a story from the original designer of the PC game where his mom called him up at 3AM asking, "I'm at the sea serpent, I can't figure out how to win."

The game has been very successful:
Top 5 in sales 6 weeks in a row. It has since dropped to 6th, "after Pokemon came out."
1st in sales 3 weeks in a row.
Average Meta-Critic Rating of 80+ ("It would be higher if it weren't for Nintendo Power. Nintendo does have an upcoming puzzle game title.")
The games featuring in a Penny Arcade strip hasn't hurt either.
The PC version is the #1 downloadable game on AOL.

The question, "Where will this take us?" was asked of the audience. What are the implications of going from the PC to the DS? What does it mean for game budgets and scope? Will we begin to see more cross-development or fast-prototyping on the PC for handheld markets? Will we see more overlaps between existing genres or more casual versions of historically PC genres? Where too does this leave traditional licenses?

The question and answer session consisted of a few questions regarding:

1.) Q: There is a European and US Version, are there plans for a Japanese Version? A: Not yet.
2.) Q: How was cooperation from Nintendo on this title? A: Yes, it was good.
3.) Q: Would something like the use of Wacom Tablet on the PC help prototyping? A: Yes, that would likely help. It would also help if the DS was in your mind during the original design.

Posted by casey at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 25, 2006

Meeting Report: Wednesday, September 20th, 2006

IGDA Meeting Minutes by Casey O'Donnell
Wednesday, September 23, 2006
Leo Zuniga - Designer, Vicarious Visions, speaks on Tiny Tony: Delivering Console-Quality Gameplay on a Handheld Platform

Minute Taker's Note: My brief notes on Leo's presentation cannot possibly do justice to what was packed into his presentation, but I've tried to capture some of the bullet points. If you'd like more information regarding the details of the talk, I'm sure Leo would be happy to answer them.

The meeting began with several announcements by IGDA members.

. QoL Certification Initiative - Erin Hoffman
. IGDA Tools SIG - Raquel Bujans
. Upcoming Charity Event in Cooperation with Childs Play - Ken Bowen
. The Montréal International Game Summit in November is Coming Up

Leo spent the first part of his presentation talking a bit about his start in the game industry. He talked about his transition from QA to Production Tester to Designer. After the personal history introduction, Leo focused more specifically on Tony Hawk, and the move towards, "Tiny Tony."

The goal of Tony Hawk (TH) on the handhelds was to capture the feel that makes Tony on other consoles fun, within the limitations of handhelds. Leo's first experience with this was on TH Pro Skater (THPS) 2 for the Game Boy Advance (GBA). The goal was to retain the "feel" of the original TH, and the Isometric (Iso) engine they developed for the game captured the visual fidelity they they were targeting, but they still felt that there was "something missing." They continually asked questions about what makes the game tick at it's core. What "makes it fun?" The development of a "combo line" system helped them push the game forward in new ways. While they were also busy trying to keep up with the console, this was made easier through collaboration with Neversoft, who was developing TH on the consoles.

They found that tools provided an important way for designers to spend most of their time doing level design. TNT, and internally developed editor for the ISO engine was "everything in one tool" and instrumental in their being able to deliver a high quality game within the confines of handhelds.

Leo had several guidelines for handheld developers, and in particular many were related to the development of user interface (UI) systems for games:
. Make it possible to remove unnecessary difficulty when possible. TH employed a "kid mode" that provided handling tweaks to make the game more accessible to younger or less "hard core" players.
. Go easy on the dialog.
. Make it re-playable. TH did this by adding a "classic mode" and on the DS by providing WiFi capabilities.
. Make saving friendly.
. Not everyone likes using the shoulder buttons.

Some Nintendo DS specific UI and design guidelines were also presented:
. Use big buttons. Don't require your player to be constantly pulling out the stylus just to interact with your button or menu system. Let them use their fingers.
. Is something touchable? Make it look touchable.
. Use the microphone. Kids love hearing their own voices.
. Use the WiFi, and create a community for your players.

When moving TH to the Nintendo DS, they were finally able to make the transition from the Iso engine build for the GBA to a fully 3D engine. This meant of course that the tools and pipeline had to be developed for these new processes. They found that by moving the previous system, TNT, into 3D Studio Max, many of the same design guidelines developed for the older system still held, which allowed designers to more effectively spend their time doing design work.

They broke collision and visuals into separate systems, which allowed artists to spend their time creating assets, and designers could tweak the collision setup without having to interfere with the work of artists.

With TH American Sk8land, on the DS, Tiny Tony was much closer to the console than ever. TH Downhill Jam (THDJ) on the DS was another move, which pushed the visual fidelity of Tiny Tony closer still to that of the console. THDJ required big levels, the development of an AI system, something absent on previous TH handheld games, as well as a commitment to using the WiFi as a community access point.

Leo ended his presentation with some excellent footage of THDJ for the DS.

Posted by IanStead at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2006

Meeting Report: Tuesday, June 20th, 2006

Developers Discuss Quality of Life with Erin Hoffman (aka "ea_spouse")

We had an excellent meeting tonight featuring a lively discussion about Quality of Life lead by Erin Hoffman! She related some of her experiences, findings and research on some of the causes of bad quality of life at different studios in the industry and solutions to these problems. Local developers pitched in with their own 'war stories' and methods for reducing crunch time. Bret Dunham also gave an update on HolyStrike development which is on hold till the end of the summer. Studios and schools represented by the forty people in attendance were Vicarious Visions, 1st Playable, Spiral Design, Mildred Elley, Russel-Sage, RIT and RPI. A big thanks goes out to Erin for leading the discussion and for the chapter coordinators and volunteers that helped set up the meeting.

Here are detailed meeting minutes by Casey O'Donnell:

IGDA Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
6:30 p.m. DeJohns Restaurant and Pub
Erin Hoffman Leading a Discussion on Quality of Life

The evening began with a very brief introduction for Erin Hoffman, which could be summed up with the question, "Has anyone here not read the original ea_spouse post?"

The discussion began with attendees voicing particular aspects of which they thought had significant impact on quality of life (QoL), and discussion led by Erin, who would often begin by commenting on the ways in which that aspect was being addressed in some companies or by the IGDA at large. In some cases the more problematic elements or legal issues associated with an aspect would also be brought up to provide the opportunity to more closely examine the complexity of the problem. Attendees would comment on positive and negative experiences associated with each aspect, and ways in which it might be approached in the future.

Erin is in the middle wearing the IGDA t-shirt.

Particular features of QoL discussed during the discussion were:

1. Bottom Up or Top Down?

• The question of whether QoL of life was a top-down or bottom-up issue was discussed, though no closure was given to the problem. Many seemed to agree that it could not be entirely one or the other, but that something must be done in both directions to make any sort of meaningful change in the industry.

2. Overwork

• The discussion of overwork ranged over numerous topics. Some addressed government sponsored research demonstrating the ineffectiveness of overworked employees. Others brought up the role of 'salary' versus 'hourly' pay rates in the industry. This led to a discussion of California court cases and ongoing court cases in Florida which are shaping the future of payment mechanisms of creative and technical workers. The difficulty in defining productivity for creative and technical workers was also brought up.

3. Management and Leadership

• Effective and experienced leadership was seen as a key component to good or bad QoL. The differentiation between leads and managers was also made. Some brought up the role of managers in not just managing employees, but managing the expectations of those above them.

4. Corporate Communication

• This issue too focused on the importance of bidirectional communication in game companies. Communication must effectively move both up and down for good QoL. This was also related to effective management, but was seen more broadly and an issue on its own. For companies that run on information, information flows can be very ineffective within companies.

5. Corporate Stability

• This discussion focused primarily on the rapid growth and then rapid contraction that many companies undergo when ramping up production for a large project, then realizing that too many employees are on board during periods of non-production.

6. Planning and Processes

• Many of the issues were also seen to be critically linked to the difficulty of planning within the industry. This is in part due to its age and history in "garage" style development. TSP was brought up as one example of how planning techniques from other industries were being brought in to help plan in the game industry.

7. Corporate Vision/Values

• Corporate values or vision was seen as something which could dramatically alter the QoL within an organization. Particular items like time off for volunteer work were addressed. Other issues like a companies interest in working with the surrounding community were raised.

8. Lowest Common Denominator and Availability of Human Resources

• The trouble of QoL dropping to the lowest common denominator was brought up. That in some cases because there is a tendency for game companies to be competitive, they must all drop down the level of those with the worst QoL. That the idea that companies that "work the hardest" produce the best games.

9. Structure of the Industry

• The relationship with retail chains and consequences of online distribution (Steam or MMO's for example) were briefly discussed as having impacts on QoL.

10. Globalization and Corporate Profiles of QoL

• The question of if there were particular company profiles that crunch more than others was brought up and briefly discussed. The consequences of globalization and QoL issues in other countries was brought up.

11. Educational Aspects of QoL

• The question was raised about the role that education can play in improving QoL. Katherine Isbister said that one way is by exposing students to industry issues while they are in school by having professional developers visit classes.

Ongoing QoL projects which interested individuals can take part in:

1. IGDA Employment Contract Certification
2. IGDA Bill of Rights
3. IGDA Code of Ethics
4. Gamewatch.org

Tobi, Jacob, Eun-Yeung and Joel from 1st Playable.

---

Upcoming Events

Katherine Isbister will be having a book release celebration party on July 6th at Market Block Books in downtown Troy, NY. Read more about it in the official announcement.

In mid to late august we will be having our next official Chapter meeting featuring Leo Zuniga, a designer from Vicarious Visions. Leo will be doing a design focussed talk based on his experiences working on handheld Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS Games.

Posted by IanStead at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2006

Chapter Advisory Board Meeting Notes: Thursday, May 25th, 2006

In the evening of Thursday, May 25th, the Albany IGDA Advisory Board, Coordinators and Volunteers gathered for a brainstorm and planning meeting. The main question we wanted to answer was, "How can the Albany IGDA better serve the local game development community?"

After much discussion and some Indian food, the major goals for the next year are:

* To meet more often. Possibly every month alternating informal gatherings and prepared presentations.

* To have shorter presentations and allow for more time to ask questions, network and socialize.

* To move towards incorporating with non-profit status so that the chapter can get a bank account and make it easier for oranizations to donate to the chapter.

* To bring more people in for presentations from oustide of the Albany area.

* To get more and better feedback from the members. We will be sending out surveys to help this process.

Posted by IanStead at 02:51 AM | Comments (0)

Meeting Report: Friday, April 28th, 2006

The Albany IGDA's presence at the RPI Game Fest was a success again this year. Many excellent student projects were shown off during the festival and companies were there recruiting. Cryptic Studios, Agora Games and 1st Playable Productions.

After the show we held an informal IGDA gathering at Java++, the coffeeshop near the campus. During this meeting Ken Bowen spoke about the RPI Student Game Club, Bret Dunham gave an update on the Albany Mod Project, Holy Strike, and we drew the winners for the raffle we held at the festival (free for IGDA members, $1 tickets for non-members).

Congratulations to the winners of the raffle. We gave away one copy of Guitater Hero, two books on game development from Charles River Media (courtesy of Greg Costikyan and the NYC IGDA Chapter), several free download coupons for GDC Radio and copies of the RPI Game Development Club's Annual collection of game projects.

Although this was the completion of the IGDA's involvement in the event, a symposium was held the following Saturday morning and afternoon. Included talks were by Michael Lewis, the CEO of Cryptic Studios, Ian Bogost, Ph.D. who is the author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, a Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech and Partner at Persuasive Games, a panel of leaders at several Activision Studios including Karthik Bala, the CEO of Vicarious Visions, a panel of women in game development - Katherine Isbister and Tobi Saulnier (CEO of 1st Playable Productions) and a panel of young RPI alumns who work in the games industry including Ben Zeigler (you can read some notes from the event in several posts on his live journal), Erin Hoffman, Mike Delprete and, yours truly - Ian Stead.

Thanks to RPI for hosting this event and for all the hard work of the organizers and students and for the excellent presentations! Be sure not to miss it next year!

Posted by IanStead at 02:51 AM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2006

Meeting Report: Tuesday, March 7th, 2006

At the March 7th meeting Evan Skolnick made an excellent presentation about writing for games. This was a talk being prepared for the 2006 Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California.

Details of his talk on the GDC 2006 website here
His power point slides are also there here
An MP3 of his talk is also available for download on GDC Radio.

Following Evan's talk, Bret Dunham gave an update on progress for the mod project. He played the theme music composed for the mod, showed off concept art for the characters and weapons and gave a quick overview of setting up the Half-Life 2 Source engine for HolyStrike modding.

We had our highest attendance at this meeting with over 50 people from local studios and schools and also visitors up from Manifesto Games in New York City. Thanks to Evan for his excellent talk and Browns Brewing Company for the meeting space.

Developers from Vicarious Visions relaxing over a beer.

From 1st Playable Productions, Megan, Marjo and Colin and Coordinator Jamey Stevenson.

Posted by IanStead at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2006

Mod Project Meeting Report: Thursday, February 9th

We had a very productive brainstorming session for the HolyStrike mod project meeting on Thursday, February 9th. Alot of the design ideas from this meeting are in the design document on the wiki here. People signed up for different tasks for the project. Thanks to Mike Lynch and the RPI SBRL for providing us with a meeting space.

Posted by IanStead at 03:48 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2006

Meeting Report: Tuesday, January 31, 2006

We had a great meeting last Tuesday night. Forty people were in attendance from Vicarious Visions, 1st Playable Productions, Cyberlore, RPI, the RPI Game Development Club, Mildred Elley, UAT, BAE Systems, ITT Industries and NGI Systems. The room was packed and several people had to stand throughout the meeting so it looks like we need a new place to meet. Please post on the forum if you have any ideas of where we could meet.

"Six Million Dollar Tester: Making QA Better, Stronger, and Faster Through Automation"
by Leander Hasty

Leander "Lan" Hasty, Programmer at 1st Playable Productions, started out the evening with a thorough presentation on automated game testing tools and techniques. You can download the slides from Lan's presentation in a PDF file here: http://www.igda.org/albany/files/Leander_Hasty-QA_Automation-01-31-06.pdf

Some books and websites Lan suggested for learning more about automated testing and writing bug free code:

*Writing Solid Code: Microsoft's Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs by Steve Maguire
*The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas
*Effective C++: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Design by Scott Meyers
*Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ FAQ
*Bjarne Stroustrup's "C++ Style and Technique FAQ"
*C++ FAQ Lite
*Guru of the week archive

Lan also suggested joining C++ and language design committee mailing lists.

You can see Lan again at the Game Developers Conference roundtable he will be leading in March. More information about that is on the conference website.

Albany IGDA Mod Project - 'Holy Strike'
by Bret Dunham

Bret Dunham made a presentation on the Chapter Mod Project 'Holy Strike' and then there was a discussion about the project and people signed up for the project mailing list. This will be a 6 month project and it will be based on Valve's Source Engine. Bret's idea is to modify either Counter Strike Source or Half-Life 2 and enhance it with asymetrical game play by adding a second team of Holy men. The Half-Life 1 mod Natural Selection is one of the inspirations for this project.

* You can download Bret's PowerPoint presentation slides here

* Additional information is available on the wiki.

* If you want to join the mailing list contact Bret by sending an email to: demonhill[at]mac[dot]com

* Michael Tomaino has set up a MIRC chat room at: irc.OFTC.net #holystrike or you can use the link: irc://irc.OFTC.net/holystrike
He recommends using the IRC client listed here: http://www.silverex.org/news/

Thanks to everyone who attended the meeting and especially Lan and Bret for their excellent presentations! Next meeting will be March 9th and Evan Skolnick will be making his GDC 2006 presentation: "...And Make It Snappy! Crafting Concise, Effective Dialogue for your Game"

Professors Marc Destefano and Michael Lynch from RPI sitting with students.

Posted by IanStead at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2006

Meeting Report: Thursday, November 16, 2005

On November 16th, 2005 on a rainy Albany evening 31 people met to hear Mike DelPrete talk about his mod for Half-Life 2, Plan of Attack.

A few highlights of the presentation: Mike talked about his teams approach to mod making, promoting their mod and keeping their fans happy.

Thanks to Mike and the folks from Agora Studios for putting together this excellent presentation. Thanks to David Allen for taking photos at the meeting.

Download Mike's power point slides from the presentation here.

Additional links:
www.planofattackgame.com
www.agorastudios.com
www.agoragames.com
www.american-sk8land.com

Posted by IanStead at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2005

Meeting Report: Thursday, September 15, 2005

Twenty-eight people attended the Albany IGDA meeting on the evening of September 15th, 2005 at DeJohn's Restaurant and Pub. Brenda Brathwaite gave a presentation entitled “Murder, Sex, Censorship (and why you should care,)”. Among the attendees were employees of Vicarious Visions, 1st Playable Productions, Eden Studios, and INDVFX; professors and students from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Mildred Elley; and members of the RPI Game Development Club. Following is the full meeting report by Chapter Coordinator Jonathan Mintz.

As more people begin to play and pay attention to digital games, the industry occasionally experiences some growing pains. This summer, games made headlines as the Hot Coffee cheat for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was noticed by parents and politicians alike. In the wake of this, legislators around the country have been introducing laws intended to regulate the sale of games.

At the September 15, 2005 meeting of the Albany IGDA chapter, Brenda Brathwaite gave an excellent presentation exploring censorship and legislation of the game industry and what it means for developers. Her talk, entitled “Murder, Sex, Censorship (and why you should care,)” drew upon her experiences in developing the
Playboy: The Mansion title at Cyberlore as well as her work in coordinating the IGDA’s Sex SIG. A crowd of Albany-area game developers and students attended the meeting to hear Brenda’s thoughts on the subject and contribute their own.

In the spirit of self-regulation, Brenda opened her talk with a humorous series of disclaimers. This led into her discussion of her work on the Playboy project. She talked about the implications that a license can bring to your project, pointing out how even a Playboy-branded spreadsheet program wouldn’t be sold in Wal-Mart.

Making Playboy: The Mansion brought Brenda into conflict with one of the oldest fallacies of gaming, the assumption that games are just for kids. She used this as a springboard for discussing the history of sex and violence in video games, filling in the events leading from the Night Trap and Mortal Kombat debates of the 90s up to the Hot Coffee fiasco this summer. Going further back, she paralleled these events in gaming with regulation imposed on the comic and film industries. This led to one of her major points: almost every new form of media is perceived as dangerous at some point, even though the sex and violence in them is the same.

Having made this point, Brenda strove to get her audience to re-frame the debate over mature content in games. People in the industry may see the situation as an us vs. them battle with game developers fighting off ignorant politicians. But that’s really not the case. Everyone involved – politicians, parents, retailers, publishers, and developers – want the same thing: to protect kids from having access to mature content without parental consent. All of these groups need to work together, educating themselves and each other, to bring this about without unnecessary and problematic regulations.

Brenda summed up her talk with some suggestions for moving forward with these issues. She offered suggestions for strengthening the ESRB system and educating parents and politicians. And, in the interest of preventing another Hot Coffee incident, developers and publishers need to be careful about all game assets present in retail products.

Following Brenda’s talk, the evening concluded with a lively question and answer session.

The Albany IGDA chapter would like to thank Brenda Brathwaite for visiting us and giving a wonderful presentation. We’d also like to thank DeJohn’s Restaurant and Pub for hosting the meeting.

For more information on Brenda’s work with the IGDA Sex SIG, please visit her blog at: http://www.igda.org/sex

Brenda suggested the following links for learning more about the organizations involved in the issues she discussed:
Developers: http://www.igda.org
Publishers: http://www.theesa.com/
Retail: http://www.iema.org/

Brenda will presenting in October at Future Play at Michigan State University and in March at GDC 2006.

Posted by IanStead at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

Meeting Report: Thursday, August 25, 2005

The Albany chapter of the IGDA held its August meeting at the conference room of the Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory at RPI. There were 33 attendees including individuals from local developers 1st Playable Productions, Vicarious Visions, Tubehead, Agora Studios and local schools RPI, Mildred Elley, Russel Sage and Oneonta. Chapter coordinators James Stevenson and Ian Stead opened the meeting by welcoming the chapter members and introducing the evening’s speaker, Katherine Isbister.

Katherine Isbister is an Associate Professor of Communication at RPI. Her presentation, “Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach,” was an introduction to material from her book of the same name and her GDC presentations. Her talk offered strategies for creating more engaging game characters by employing psychological techniques in game designs

Katherine explained how developers can take advantages of characters’ faces, body language, and voices to create more believable inhabitants of virtual worlds. She also discussed how characters’ relationship to players should give a sense of their social roles, demonstrating individual characters’ friendliness and dominance relative to the player character. Finally, she spoke on the importance of creating characters with the target audience in mind, testing character concepts with potential players early in development. You can view her slides here.

The talk was follow by a brief Q&A session. Afterwards, Ian polled the audience for their thoughts about potential locations for future meetings and suggestions for meeting topics. Following that discussion, the meeting adjourned. Attendees chatted amongst themselves and later made their way downtown for drinks and dining at Brown’s Brewing Co.

Thanks go out to Katherine for her excellent presentation, James Watt for reserving the conference room at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory, and to 1st Playable Productions for the pizza and drinks.

Also, thanks to Jonathan Mintz for writing up this meeting report.

Posted by IanStead at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2005

Past Meetings: November 2002 - April 2005

Prior to the blog based website, we did not have meeting reports. This is the record of all previous meetings held between November 14, 2002 until April 18, 2005.

April 18, 2005

Following the Annual Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Game Symposium and Game Fest (where we had a table for the chapter), we had a meeting at the Java++ Cafe on the RPI campus. The topic of the meeting was discussing and planning future activities for the chapter.

May 19, 2004

At the final meeting of 2004 the Beta version of Toxic Space Chase was presented.

April 21, 2004

There was a discussion about impressions from GDC and the status of the Albany IGDA chapter and how to get members more involved. Next the Alpha version of Toxic Space Chase was shown.

March 17, 2004

Tim Stellmach and Rob Caminos presented their GDC talk on Cross Platform User Interface Development. Their presentation is available at Gamasutra here (you will need a free account to view it). The protoype of the chapter game project Toxic Space Chase was also presented.

February 18, 2004

The design document for the chapter game project was presented by Fredd Brewer. Discussion ensued about the design and tasks that need to be completed for next meeting.

January 21, 2004

The first meeting about the chapter game project. After an hour of discussion it was decided to make a simple action game reminiscent of 80s arcade games (particularly top down shooters). The May meeting is the planned completion date for this project.

November 19, 2003

The first anniversary of the Albany IGDA Chapter! Jez Sherlock and Tim Stellmach of Vicarious Visions faced off against two RPI students in a Video Game Trivia match. Tim and Jez also had a Q&A session about their beginnings in the game industry and other questions like the worst games they've worked on, their favorite games, and which game characters they see themselves as.

October 15, 2003

There was a presentation and discussion about summer internships in the game industry. Jonathan Mintz and Drew Marlowe spoke about working at Vicarious Visions, Brad Smith spoke about working at Maxis and Matt Richenburg spoke about working for Microsoft's XBox Games division.

April 9, 2003

Jez Sherlock, Console Engineering Manager for Vicarious Visions was the guest speaker at this meeting. His presentation was about how to become a game engineer and how he got into the business.

January 29, 2003

Lead Artist, Steve Derrick from Vicarious Visions was the guest speaker for the evening. Steve discussed the role of Art in game development; gave some insight into his own background, tips on portfolio preparation, and how to manage your career as an artist in the game industry.

November 14, 2002

The first meeting of the Albany Chapter. Game Designer Tim Stellmach (Lead Designer of Ultima Underworld, Thief and Thief II) from Vicarious Visions discussed philosophies on game design, his perspectives on the industry, and what it takes to be a succesful designer.

Posted by IanStead at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)