The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is a nonprofit membership organization that advocates globally on issues related to digital game creation and unites the game development community. The IGDA SF chapter serves the San Franciscio and Bay Area game development community specifically. IGDA membership is encouraged, but not required, for participation in meetings and events.

UPCOMING IGDA SF MEETING & MIXER:
Wednesday, January 31 @ 7:30pm
Action Theater, 2nd floor of METREON
101 4th Street @ Mission, San Francisco

The Perfect Storm:

How Games Became More Emotional Than Movies

January 31, 2020
Headline from the future: Games Now More Emotional Than Movies
During the first two decades of the 21st Century awareness of games reached new markets and supported a wide spectrum of preferences for play. Electronic distribution and social networks radically transformed how gamers sample, buy, play, and recommended games. New techniques on creating emotion with gameplay expanded beyond those possible inside film's borders. Those who took advantage of this shift in business models and creative opportunities reaped the biggest rewards.

How do we get from here to there? Today, large budgets, current demographics and segmentation limit game design opportunities to well-explored areas of fun. If it doesn't involve war, sports, or Tolkien, it is hard to find at retail. What do Wii Sports, Line Rider and Diner Dash have in common? To capture the hearts and minds of the mass market consumer, designers, marketers and publishers must all understand their customers and why they play.

Like chickens and eggs, this is both a business and a creative problem. We already know that great gameplay creates strong player emotions, and what players value more than graphics are the internal sensations that play creates. Designers aim to deliver innovative player experiences (PX), but traditional marketing methods measure only what players already buy. In other words, once players discover a great PX, they can articulate a reason to purchase it, but before there is a product, traditional marketing methods can't measure its appeal.

By looking at emotions and why people play, XEODesign's methods expose a game's potential PX. Developers who access these player emotions early in game development can innovate with much less risk.

To crack the code we must:
  • Gather and exploit all available customer data
  • Increase our skills at creating specific emotions from gameplay
  • Understand the customer and what PX players find "fun"
  • Increase awareness of the role emotions play in games
  • Target and tune specific emotions coming from each game mechanic

The paradox of developing for next-gen hardware is simple. Budgets increase in competition for gamer's attention. Innovations decrease in proportion to budgets. Moving beyond simply adding a few features to last year's top ten games requires substantial investment in knowing why people play games. To create innovative future games and make the ones we are currently working on more emotional, we must know why our customers buy, and what they find fun.

This talk with explore:
  • What mass market gamers really want
  • The four most important emotions of game design
  • The technological and social changes that will change our business forever
  • What we can do to prepare and know our customer now

Join us for an overview of what XEODesign has learned from 15 years of experience of hacking the "what is fun" problem from the player's perspective. Beyond next-gen graphics, players demand next-gen Player Experiences.

Free white papers on emotion and the fun of games are available here: www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Nicole Lazzaro Nicole Lazzaro, founder and president of XEODesign, is an award-winning interface designer and the leading authority on emotion and the fun of games. Her seventeen years of research defined the mechanisms of emotion that drive play and reshaped the fun of over 40 million player experiences including Myst, the Sims, Diner Dash and smart pens. She has helped clients such as EA, DICE, Ubisoft, Monolith, Sony, Playfirst, and Maxis explore new game mechanics and audiences. A frequent speaker, she enjoys sharing her research on "Why We Play Games." Prior to founding XEODesign in 1992, Nicole earned a degree in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University and worked in film.

 

AFTER THE PRESENTATION:
Join your colleagues at LJ's (located on the second floor of the Metreon) for drinks, fun and networking.

MEETING SPACE GENEROUSLY PROVIDED BY:



  
Upcoming Local Events

Guildhall Series: Mastering the Craft
of Online Gaming Infrastructure
19 April, San Francisco, CA, USA
http//www.guildhallseries.com/

The Guildhall Series focuses on the business side of operating online games. Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming Infrastructure is the first event of a four-part conference series. Focus will be on operating issues including payments, security, and bandwidth & hosting. Come share your ideas and learn what strategies, frameworks, and methodologies work for your online gaming business. Sign up before 02/15/07 for early registration discount. In addition, IGDA members should enter discount code “IGDA” to receive an additional 10% off.
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Past IGDASF events
previous event

October 2006:
AUTOPSY: A Postmortem of CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder PC

July 2006:
STAR TREK ONLINE GRAPHICAL
DEVELOPMENT SECRETS: Achieving the look of your game.

May 2006:
Reestablishing an Icon:
The Peaks and Pitfalls of Developing Tomb Raider: Legend

February 2006:
THE REVOLUTION WILL BE DOWNLOADED:
Confessions of Five Casual Game Makers

December 2005:
Worlds Are Colliding!:
The Convergence of Film and Games

October 2005:
Taming the Dragon:
Next-Generation Asset Creation for PS3

June 2005:
Giving Life to Death (Jr.)

April 2005:
Thinking Outside The (x)Box

January 2005:
Introducing COLLADA


More past events
Chapter Coordinator: Rudy Geronimo

IGDA SF Advisory Board:
Angus Chassels
Mark DeLoura, Ubisoft
Peter deVroede, Perpetual Entertainment
Jeremy Gordon, Secret Level
Bret Mogilefsky, SCEA

Webmaster: Brian Church

Chapter Reporter/Photographer: Karl Hodtwalker

To volunteer or be added to the IGDA SF anouncement list, email Rudy.