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Debates 2.0

by Jason Della Rocca (April 2004)

This was the chapter's second members-only event using the roundtable discussion format. About 80 developers and industry professionals showed up to discuss and debate on various game development related topics (see summaries below). The approach this time was for the topics to be more theme/issue oriented. The last roundtable meeting was broken down by discipline, and while successful, made the discussions overly broad...

Unlike the chapter's usual beer infused social/presentation nights, the evening was somewhat more serious as developers were locked in debate for about an hour and a half.

After the roundtable sessions, everyone hung around for a snack and continued discussion. And, we raffled off a few books from the New Riders Games series along with a t-shirt from the recent GDC.

Roundtable Summaries

 

Developer Quality of Life: Consequences and Best Practices

by Francois Dominic Laramee, Freelance Writer and Game Designer


Twelve people, plus the moderator, showed up for the Quality of Life roundtable. I began by outlining the findings of the white paper we unveiled at GDC, then the participants discussed the situation in their companies.

Topics we talked about included:

  • Unionization, which all of the participants who expressed an opinion on the matter think would be a GOOD thing.
  • Lack of organization and understaffing are both consequences of overly optimistic contracts that leave teams in difficult situations (the work MUST get shipped, no matter what mistakes were made in pre-production.)
  • Separate prototyping/pre-prod contracts would allow experimentation and let teams determine the exact features of a game before signing a full-fledged production deal.
  • Team spirit sometimes causes long hours, as developers who don't need to work overtime stay in to support their buddies who do.
  • Pushing people into management/leadership roles they don't want is a terrible idea.

Some good news, however: a participant from Microids reported that the situation there was quite good and that he as project manager actively sought to improve it further, and according to a member of the Myst team I met in the corridor after the talk there are efforts underway at Ubisoft to implement some of the white paper's ideas.

 

Advances in Artificial Intelligence: Next Steps for Game/Character Interactions...

by Dr. Paul Kruszewski, President, BioGraphic Technologies

It was a very good turn out as the room was almost full with over 20 people, the majority of whom were programmers but there were also several researchers and an artist. The discussion/debates were as timeless as game AI itself:

  • What is/is not game AI? It was clear that if we had asked everyone in the room for a definition of what game AI was that there would have been over 20 different definitions. This was contrasted to rendering for example which is a much more mature discipline. For example, why everyone knows what a triangle and a texture are, navigation or decision making means very different things to different people. This in turn brought up the point that there is a lack of a common language in AI and as such we are limited in advancing the field.
  • Is Animation Control AI? This came out of the above point on what the frontiers of game AI are. Most people felt that animation control was too simplistic to be considered AI but a minority felt that its time is coming to be considered AI.
  • Who should author AI? Not surprisingly most people said programmers. Firstly, because they felt that AI authoring was very specialized and required a logical programming approach. The other reason why non-programmers like designers and artists couldn't do it was due to a lack of visual tools. Although there was much debate on how AI should be implemented (scripts, HFSM, decision trees, etc), there was consensus that there should be a visual tool that would allow artista to generate data to be fed to a programmer.

Storytelling in Games

by Clint Hocking, Writer/Designer, Ubisoft

There were about 12 attendees and we opened by presenting a brief summary of things that were discussed in three different GDC sessions:

  • IGDA Writers Group Gathering
  • Storytelling in Games Roundtable
  • Warren Spector's talk

We talked briefly about the Writers SIG and the Writer's forum on the IGDA site, then introduced the concept of the three things we typically talk about when we talk about Storytelling in Games:

  • Embedded Narrative
  • Emergent Narrative
  • Procedural Narrative

Games that were mentioned and discussed as relates to story included: Splinter Cell; SW:KOTOR; Gothic 2; Deus Ex; Prince of Persia; Morrowind;  GTA3; Syberia.

Topics:

  • sympathy and empathy with characters
  • quality of acting/voice/dialogue
  • whether story or game should come first (in importance or chronologically in development)
  • games that evolve procedurally
  • linearity vs procedural stories
  • the need for an ending/resolution vs exhaustion
  • "easy to tell 1000 bad stories"
  • the evolution of a new (or maybe an old) kind of writer
  • tools for procedural story generation
  • tools to help authors create non-linear story
  • tools help evolve understanding
  • technology plateau and story as differentiator
  • game mode vs story mode (GTA + Morrowind)

 

Mobile Game Market and Opportunities for Innovation

by Patrick Minotti, Executive VP, JAMDAT Mobile Canada

The mobile gaming market is in a period of tremendous growth. The two main topics discussed were the challenges associated with game deployment and the support of new mobile technologies.

There is very little standardisation among phone manufacturers and wireless operators. This turns game development -- or at least the deployment phase of it -- into a logistical nightmare. The situation is analogous to the early PC game development experience in the eighties, when it was necessary to support multiple OS and hardware configurations in order to reach the greatest number of potential customers.

However, little standardisation often means fertile ground for technological innovation. After mobile multiplayer games entered the market in 2003, developers (spurred on by chipset manufacturers) are gearing up to produce hardware-accelerated 3D games. Also around the corner are the promising "location-based" games, thanks to the GPS (Global Positioning System) functionality to be found in several new phones this year.

Even though the mobile gaming market is still not very mature from a development perspective, there was little doubt among the attendees that 2004 will be the year that mobile gaming will earn full respect of the gaming community.

Women Developers/Games for Women: Market and Industry Diversity

by Isabelle Marazzani, Director, NAD Centre

After a quick round of introductions of the 10 people present (7 women, 3 men!), we dove into discussions by asking around how many females were working in everybody’s workplace? Unsurprisingly, the headcount was low (less than 10% in each case). The obvious next question was why. Participants unanimously agreed with Ubisoft's Geneviève Lord that developers rarely employ women simply because women rarely play. So we’re back to the chicken-or-the-egg dilemma: how do we bring games to market that will please women so they play more, so they view game dev as a meaningful career and join teams, so we collectively get better games in return, so we play more, and so on?

The discussion moved to the different genres (RPG, Adventure, MMO, Sports, etc) and design choices that could bring women to the playground (relationship-based gaming, protecting loved ones versus killing everything that moves, coopetitive versus competitive). Many examples of games tapping into women interests and values were brought to the table (Sims, dancing titles, Everquest, etc) and Concordia University's Lynn Hughes also suggested that games using peripherals/devices already used by women could prove to be less intimidating (eg, mobile phone).

Obviously, developers are not too eager to gamble their development dollars on games that target women. So why not use an already female-popular intellectual property, suggested Annie Bacon from DC Studios. Who’s going to break the bank with a "Sex and the City" game?

For more info on the subject:

 

Credit Standards and Developer Recognition/Respect

Sadly, this roundtabe was cancelled due to lack of interest...

April Gathering Pictorial

...here are just a few shots I took during the April gathering, after all the roundtables took place... (all persons are identified from left to right)

 


Ubisoft's Myst IV producer Genevieve Lord continues discussion of gender issues with Isabelle Marazanni (Centre NAD) and Jean Asselin (QC gov).

 


Dr. Paul Kruszewski (BioGraphic Technologies) sizes up the AI roundtable discussions with Martin René de Cotre (Intellactive) in leather jacket.

 
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