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GDC03 Rountable Summaries

Each year, the Game Developers Conference hosts roundtable discussions on topics and issues that are important to developers. In order to share the value of these roundtable with the rest of the game development community, you can read the following post-GDC reports and dive into the ongoing discussion. Each roundtable is presented with a brief summary along with a link to the full report and a pointer to the related IGDA discussion forum. Enjoy!

 

Roundtable Index

 

Roundtable Summaries

AI in Computer Games

by Eric Dybsand (Glacier Edge Technology), Neil Kirby (Lucent Technologies) and Steven Woodcock (Wyrd Wyrks Consulting)

This series of roundtables provides discussion on all topics relating to computer game artificial intelligence development. On the first day of the conference, we hosted three simultanous sessions which were open to discussion on any computer game AI related topic. Since each session was unique, a wide range of topics were discussed. On the second day of the conference, we hosted genre specific sessions, with Eric moderating the RTS/Wargame session, Neil moderating the FPS session and Steve moderating the RPG/Adventure game session. On the last day of the conference, we joined forces into one room, and "The Three AI Guys" hosted the "AI for Beginners" interactive panel discussion.

> Read roundtable report 1, report 2 and report 3 in the GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

AI Interface Standards: The Road Ahead

by Alexander Nareyek (Carnegie Mellon University), Nick Porcino (LucasArts) and Mark Kolenski (Blue Fang Games)

The roundtable's goal was to describe and discuss the state of the work of the IGDA Committee on Artificial Intelligence Standards. After a general introduction about the Committee, the moderators gave an overview of the current state of the Committee's single working groups, i.e., world interfacing, pathfinding, steering, decision trees, finite state machines, rule-based systems, and goal-oriented action planning. After each working group's presentation, specific questions were raised to the audience, and general feedback was encouraged. About 45 participants attended the roundtable (not all attended both sessions).

The roundtable went extremely well and offered an exclusive opportunity for the participants to hear about the latest directions on AI interface standards, and provided valuable feedback on future directions for the Committee.

> Read full roundtable report at ai-center.com
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Art Management for Artists

by Doug Oglesby, Red Storm Entertainment

The topic for our discussion was the management issues faced by lead artists, and how leads can find solutions for them. Central topics involved managing yourself in your new position, managing the project (both the art load and other leads), and managing the team that you are assigned to. Since most beginning managers are selected for their ability as artists or their ability to meet deadlines efficiently, training for leadership is seldom a given, so the talk was aimed largely at creating channels for communication between attendees, and passing on strategies from the more experienced people.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Blueprint for the Next Step: Start-up to Stability

by Clarinda Merripen, Cyberlore Studios

“Blueprint for the Next Step: Start-up to Stability” brought people together to discuss what creates underlying foundations of an established, stable company. I’ve distilled the three roundtables down to the most necessary bits. My goal was to make the final document readable, focusing on the major topics discussed, with highlights around particular points of interest. Furthermore, I wished to bring the nuts-and-bolts, hands-on knowledge vetted in the sessions to light. At the end of the document I’ve included an audience breakdown and list of further reading.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Checklist for a New Publisher

by Ray Muzyka, BioWare Corp.

This roundtable was held in three sessions with very good attendance which increased each day. Attendees represented a wide and eclectic range of groups - ranging from students, to newly formed developers, to more established developers, to publishers, to venture capitalists, to cell phone/wireless companies, to multimedia conglomerates - based all over the world. The feedback from the attendees during the three sessions was uniformly outstanding and many participants mentioned that they felt the quality of the attendees and their great comments really added to their learning experience.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Children’s Software: Past, Present, and Future

by Ken Kahn, Toontalk

Participants were given a list of questions to structure the discussion. The questions are in the full report. The first two sessions were full – 40 to 50 people. They ranged from producers, to educators, to graduate students, to parents. The Saturday morning session had 20 to 25 participants. This session had more researchers and academics than the other sessions.

In all three sessions there was much discussion of how the realities of the marketplace make it hard to make innovative or quality titles. Compared to the past the budgets are much smaller and publishers are more risk averse. They demand that titles have familiar (therefore licensed) characters. Many people proposed ways to work around these limitations. Among them are to make titles for a broad age range that includes teenagers and adults as well as children. Another is to have titles that involve actions in the real world since there is a backlash against children spending too much time sitting in front of a display. Another was to get funding from a foundation. Another was to do guerilla marketing. Several other topics related to children’s software were also discussed.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Creating, Maintaining, and Improving 3D Art Production Pipelines

by Chris Clay, Turbine Entertainment Software

In this roundtable we explored the various trials and tribulations involved with creating, maintaining, and improving 3D art production pipelines. Each day we focused on a different aspect of the topic with between 30 and 50 people attending each day. On the second day I and several others went to the wrong room and ran the round table with just five of us. The people who went to the proper room ran as well without me.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Developer Focused Curriculum Feedback

by James Thrush, Super X Studios

The intention of this roundtable was to provide a forum for developers to voice opinions on what they would like to see covered in academic curriculums. As there was only one developer attending, the focus shifted slightly but was still valuable as an inter-change of ideas from educators at various game development schools. Eleven were in attendance, mostly educators from the major game development schools (Full Sail, Digipen, Art Institute, several colleges, and one highly successful high school program).

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Developers in Academics: Needs and Potentials

by Mark Meier, The Art Institute of Phoenix

The roundtable focused on connecting the world of academics with that of the game development industry. Specifically, dialogue at the roundtable focused on: (1) the impact developers can have on students training to enter the game industry; (2) the ways teachers and academic institutions can better organize themselves to insure clear communication with the development industry.

Among the twenty or so participants were individuals from the Guildhall Project at SMU, the Cleveland Art Institute, The Art Institutes International, and companies like EA and others.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Fantastic Art -- Fast

by Walter Park, Saffire

Modern games seem to demand a huge amount of quality art, done within the constraints of a limited budget and even more limited time. In this roundtable we tried to tackle this problem and explore different methods artists had for getting that art done quickly. In the various sessions the discussion covered topics like preproduction, art tools, fast art techniques, proper art management, art libraries, and outsourcing. A broad cross-section of experience and job descriptions was represented in all three sessions. This gave the opportunity to explore a good variety of methods for high quality but quick game art.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Freelancers’ Roundtable

by François Dominic Laramée

In its third year at GDC, this roundtable gathered freelance designers, programmers, artists, audio specialists and also the people who employ them. Participants swapped marketing techniques, tricks on how to set their rates and manage their client bases, and their thoughts on the ever-fluctuating status of the freelancer in the game development community.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Game Architecture Roundtable

by Dave Weinstein, Red Storm Entertainment

There is no direct relationship between the quality of an underlying game engine and sales. Games with engines that only barely hold together have sold millions, while games with elegant and efficient game engines have sold in the handfuls of thousands. However, a quality architecture can speed development, make late game play enhancements possible, and can often increase the quality of life for the developers. These sessions included an overview of architectures and issues with architectures, specific areas of game architecture in detail, and the examples of what has gone right and what has gone very very wrong in game architecture development.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Game Editing Tools

by Dave Weinstein, Red Storm Entertainment

Historically, the game industry has done a very poor job on tools development. We often foist it off on inexperienced junior engineers, who have neither the programming expertise nor the professional expertise to develop them properly. With the content requirements of modern games dwarfing the engineering demands, this is a recipe for disaster. The sessions ranged from "worst case" horror stories of tool development gone awry to focused discussions of how to develop and improve tools.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Game Object Structure

by Kyle Wilson, Day 1 Studios

The Game Object Structure roundtable discussed common issues in designing a game object system, including hierarchy vs. composition, scene graph structure, serialization, persistence, run-time type identification and object editing tools. We had about a hundred attendees over the course of the three sessions. Companies represented at the roundtable included Gnostic Labs, Ion Storm, Sammy Studios, Gas Powered Games, Sony, and Cyan.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Indie Developers Group Gathering

by John Szeder, Seismic Studios

30 people attended the indie developers group gathering. Participants included successful indies, indie-curious full time developers, and amateur developers looking for advice and guidance. The group discussion started with an introduction, and a quick poll to see what types of games people were making: Web, wireless, 3D, PC, and multiplayer were the categories. The attendees then split into smaller groups that were focused on their particular game category. The event was tremendously successful in helping provide interaction between the indie developers of today and the indie developers of tomorrow.

> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Joys and Pains of Designing Licensed-Based Games

by Luis Barriga, Vicarious Visions

This session dealt with the pros and cons of working on license-based games. The main idea was to get a group of people together to talk about this common scenario and to benefit from each other’s experience. Good practices, horror stories and observations on process all came up from a pretty diverse (not only including developers and publishers but also IP holder representatives) and experienced crowd.

Several recurring themes emerged, most of them dealing with process issues like educating the IP holders on the development process and cutting as many middlemen between the developers and the licensors as possible.

> Read full roundtable report and slides in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Managing Overseas Developers Effectively

by Tom Sloper, Sloperama Productions

This roundtable examined the pros and cons of working with overseas developers. Acknowledging that the primary advantage of hiring overseas developers was cost, the attendees discussed how to overcome the disadvantages that can result. Early planning, coordination, and relationship management were top topics. Also discussed were methods for the transfer of documents, equipment and builds. Dealing with time zones and language differences. When to travel and when not to travel; how to keep travel expenses down. With 15-20 attendees (mostly project managers or overseas developers) at each session, war stories, tips, and tricks for working with overseas companies were exchanged.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

User Interface Roundtable

by Garner Halloran, Redstorm Entertainment

This roundtable covered the broad topic of user interface design. The abstract listed a number of suggested topics to cover, but most of the time attendees came up with their own great ideas to talk about. Some of the topics we discussed: use of voice recognition and over the internet, good and bad examples of UI, UI prototyping, drill down menus in RTS games, keyboard and controller configurations, UI animations, localization issues, and tutorials in games. Attendance at all sessions was greater than last year with 40+ in the first two and 20+ in the last one.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums

Women In Game Development: Where To Next?

by Heather Kelley, Ion Storm Austin

Since its inception in 2000, the Women in Game Development Committee of the IGDA has been working to improve the male-female ratio within the game development profession. This roundtable was hosted to discuss our most recent Committee efforts, and to share information and solicit feedback about our upcoming projects. While not a general discussion on “women in games,” the WIGD roundtables touch on a wide variety of matters relevant to improving industry-wide gender balance, such as workplace culture, recruitment, education, and mentorship.

> Read full roundtable report in GDC archives
> Discuss in IGDA Forums