conference
Latest
Origin Stories: MacTech Conference
About the only time you'll see Neil Ticktin sitting down during the MacTech Conference is to eat, very briefly. I managed to get him to sit down long enough to do a quick interview about how the conference began for this week's Origin Stories.
MacTech 2012: One to remember
Last week Mike Schramm, Kelly Guimont and myself attended MacTech Conference in Los Angeles. We'll have a video interview with the organizer and editor-in-chief of MacTech magazine, Neil Ticktin, later this week, but here are some observations made during the event. Mike Schramm MacTech is always an excellently run, conference year-ending event in Los Angeles, and this year was no exception. I mostly sat in on the dev track, where we got to see some really interesting talks about AirPlay, how to implement transitions and even a great (though a little out of left field) talk about fitness and dieting. As usual, MacTech Editor-in-Chief Neil Ticktin made sure there was plenty to do outside of the conference hall too, with a very nice trip to Disney Animation and the usual march on Universal City. MacTech is always a great opportunity to do some networking and learn about the state of both development and IT in the Mac world, and this year's conference didn't disappoint. Kelly Guimont MacTech is always amazing, and what I love about it most is that you get a different crowd than at other sorts of conferences. You get a lot of enterprise/IT folks who are very, very smart and in some cases, very, very frustrated because their toolset is limited or there's some technological hurdle they can't quite get over. Getting all those people in the same place to share tips and tricks and sort out the Dark Art Of Enterprise Mac Management is a really great thing to see. Add to that the great speakers covering all sorts of content, the food/snacks/coffee and then a nice event each evening, and honestly why wouldn't you go back every year? I tell everybody to go to a MacTech event if there's one near them, and here's my tip to readers: Get a big jar, write MACTECH 2013 on it, and start putting pennies in now. Show up with an empty notebook and be prepared to overwork your brain. Apple says "funner" is a word, so I'm going with it: You are hard-pressed to find a funner conference than MacTech. As for myself, I noticed the attention to detail MacTech puts into these events. It may seem weird to have a presentation about fitness, or a bunch of sci-fi statues in the hallway, but these things are designed to foster conversations, connections and learning. MacTech is really about the people, and making those connections. Perhaps the best thing I've seen at any conference were the attendees, stripped of their smartphones for a few hours, loaded into buses to head to Disney Animation Studios, suddenly forced to interact. No screens glowing beneath their faces, just people in the dark talking to each other about their work and lives. That's pretty great.
The Guild Counsel: Damion Schubert remembers Meridian 59 at GDC
Last week was the final GDC Online, as the yearly convention moves out to Los Angeles next year under the new name GDC Next. Coincidentally, developers gave several postmortem talks about some of the classic MMOs of years ago. Among those was Meridian 59, and BioWare's Damion Schubert took us back in time to look at what it was like as the game prepped for launch and the first few years. What stands out are the incredible stories that came from player interaction and guild rivalries. Whether you're long-time fan or someone who wasn't even born yet when those early games emerged, this trip through the time machine is definitely worth a look!
Apple to hold conference for iDevice accessory makers, school them in using Lightning connectors
Apple may have shaken things up with its Lightning connector's unique internals, but a leaked schedule reveals it's holding a conference to help accessory makers get a handle for crafting products with the tech. Taking place between November 7th and 9th in Shenzhen, China, the MFi (Made for iPad / iPhone / iPod) Technology Summit will acquaint manufacturers with the new standard and guidelines for developing gear with the cable. Rather than divulging how to create Lightning connectors, it appears that Apple will be keeping the specifications close to its vest and assume the mantle of gatekeeper. According to one of TechCrunch's sources, Apple will control the supply of pins for its connector and will only sell them to partners when accessories meet Cupertino's standards. This tactic would match up nicely with the current requirements for the MFi certification program, which already makes parts from Apple-approved suppliers a necessity. It sounds like a potentially pricey proposition, but the source also claims that Cook and Co. have a fair asking price for components doled out in bulk, considering the technology behind them. Curious to see what else is on the docket for the three day shindig? Hit the first source link below for the full schedule.
Free for All: Free-to-play and mobile at GDC Online, part 1
GDC Online was fantastic this year. Really, it's great every year, but I found more bits of goodness this time around than ever before. It's simply my favorite convention, possibly because it's aimed more at press and devs than at fans. There's a wonderful lack of loudspeakers booming dance music and only a handful of booth babes. In other words, GDC Online is quieter, smaller and more professional than a typical fan convention. For a grumpy old gamer like yours truly, it's heaven. I can actually talk to developers without having to scream over music. What did I find, and what excited me this year? A lot. We've already written up or recorded many interviews so far, but I wanted to take this week's Free for All and MMObility to recap the stuff that truly got me excited. Let's get to it... there's simply too much to see!
MMO Family: Exploring game writing for short attention spans
Trying to create a virtual world that's engaging and compelling is no easy task. But for an adult designer, trying to do so for a young audience is even more challenging. Kids' interests are not necessarily the same as adults' interests, and their life experiences are much different. On top of that, you can't even lump all child age groups together; a four-year-old, nine-year-old, and 12-year-old are all tackling vastly different challenges in their lives. At this year's GDC Online, Elizabeth McLaren from 1st Playable Productions gave a talk about this very topic, titled Short Attention Span Theatre -- Writing for Child Gamers. In it, she looked to the book publishing industry to see what themes and interests exist for particular age groups and how they can be integrated into video game writing. Read on for highlights of the panel and a brief look at the mind of a child gamer.
The Tattered Notebook: Linda Carlson on goat herding and community management
What do goat herding and community management have to do with one another? On the surface, you'd probably think not much, but at GDC Online this week, SOE Head of Global Relations Linda "Brasse" Carlson explained the parallels between her job as Community Manager and her job as a goat herder. In the talk, though, she not only gave advice on how to run a community management team but also shared some interesting observations about some of SOE's online communities in general. In this week's Tattered Notebook, we'll look at some of the highlights.
GDC Online 2012: A (severed) hands-on with The War Z
Everyone loves zombies. We all enjoy shooting them to bits, pummeling them with a hammer, and watching them die... again. But I'd been feeling a bit tired of the zombie genre, even though some of my favorite titles are heavy on the zombs. Then I sat down and played through a bit of The War Z, a new post-apocalyptic horror shooter MMO that tosses players on servers up to 60 miles square and holding up to 250 players. Those zones are chock-full of zombies, so players who care to risk it all can hope to survive as they run, gun, and generally get their wits scared out of them. I wasn't alone during my short time in the game, thanks to Alex Josef, Director of Communications for Hammerpoint Interactive We sat down for an interview and wound up smashing zombie heads with a flashlight. Ah, the perils of writing about games! Join me past the cut to read what I thought. %Gallery-168282%
GDC Online 2012: Flying high with World of Warplanes
Wargaming.net CEO Viktor Kislyi is a busy man in charge of one of the fastest-growing online studios in the world. Since the launch of World of Tanks and its rise to superstar status, Wargaming.net has grown to encompass 1,200 people in 11 offices around the world. Half of these are developers on the studio's three main projects, while the other half run support for the highly lucrative World of Tanks. With World of Tanks under their belts, Kislyi and his team are preparing to press the starter switch for World of Warplanes. If you haven't paid much attention to it yet, perhaps you should, particularly if you're a fan of flight simulators. World of Warplanes covers the early days of air combat from 1930s-era biplanes to Korean War jet fighters. We grabbed a few minutes of Kislyi's time at GDC Online this week to see how World of Warplanes was shaping up and whether there were any new surprises that the team was prepared to reveal at the event. Read on, flyboys and flygirls!
GDC Online 2012: Paul Barnett reimagines Ultima with a chicken and a spoon
Paul Barnett is a great storyteller with a passion for games. Anyone who followed Warhammer Online early on can't forget the engaging speeches and videos Barnett made through beta and launch. But it's no longer 2007, and he's long since moved on from Warhammer. Instead, he's been working on Ultima Forever, a browser-based, online rendition of Ultima IV. This week at GDC Online, he told the story of how the game came to be. He was given a chicken and a spoon and told to go away and try to make something. The only boundaries was that he couldn't have any other stuff, the game had to be good, and he had to do it quick and without help. Did Barnett succeed with his chicken and spoon? Read on for Barnett's tale of Ultima Forever as well as a look at the lessons he learned along the way.
GDC Online 2012: Ethics panel roasts freemium, labels it 'entertainment socialism'
Ethics in game design was a hot topic at this year's GDC Online. Free-to-play is, of course, on everyone's mind, and one panel in particular stood in sharp contrast to the steady stream of positivity surrounding the model in most quarters. The sit-down featured a handful of developers including representatives from Amazon, Bobber Interactive, and Immersyve. "This whole concept of freemium play, in my opinion, is the most radical form of entertainment socialism since Obama got elected," said Bobber's Scott Dodson. "You've got a whole bunch of one-percenters paying for a bunch of freeloaders." Senior Amazon designer Nik Davidson likened the industry to a gold rush and also poked fun at the supposition that big spenders are acting responsibly. "We like to think that the ones spending vast sums on these games are sons of Dubai oligarchs, but we have the data to prove that they're not, and that they probably can't afford to spend what they're spending," Davidson said. "We're saying our market is suckers -- we're going to cast a net that catches as many mentally ill people as we can!" Immersyve's Scott Rigby chimed in as well. "What do we call our best customers these days? I'm not sure I'd want to be called a whale by anybody. Sticky is not, generally, a good quality. I think we have this subtle language of control for our customers, and when paired with our ability to collect data, it raises some interesting ethical questions," he said.
GDC Online 2012: F2P is the platform of the future
Free-to-play. That single word elicits some strong emotions when uttered in the MMO gaming community, emotions generating declarations of genre fidelity to spurts of vitriol. It's definitely a love/hate hot topic. And according to market trends presented at GDC Online 2012, free-to-play is not going anywhere. Not only has F2P got its foot in the market share's door, but it's kicked that door down and is moving in. During the presentation, titled Free-to-Play Market Trends and Metrics, Dr. Joost van Dreunen explored the recent market performance of the free-to-play genre and shared predictions about the future. As Managing Director at Superdata Research (a company that specializes in research on entertainment media and consumer technologies), van Dreunen has a wealth of market data at his disposal. He also teaches a course in media theory in games at NYU and will be adding economics for game developers next term. These are his thoughts on the state of free-to-play today and in the future.
Meet us at MacTech
Next week at MacTech Conference in Los Angeles, TUAW is going to be interviewing Apple developers as part of our Origin Stories series. MacTech Conference is a rare time that we can get close with so many key players in the Apple community, and we're going to use it to bring you some great insight into what developers are up to. If you are attending the event, and want to tell us the story behind your app, MacTech has set up a "Meet the Press" form here. This is the best way to let us know that you want to talk to us. At MacTech will be myself, Mike Schramm and Kelly Guimont (plus our video crew), so it's an awesome time to connect. If you don't know about MacTech Conference, it's not just for developers, but also IT pros, enterprise and consultants. The event is wall-to-wall with sessions that organizers have designed to help you work better and smarter. TUAW readers get a very special discount -- but you have to use this link. If you've not yet checked out the event, you can see the sessions, activities and more about the event here. TUAW is a media sponsor of this event, and has worked with MacTech on event coverage in the past.
GDC Online 2012: John Smedley's keynote on MMO trends and the future of gaming
At GDC Online this week, SOE President John Smedley gave a keynote address titled Free-to-play: Driving the Future of MMOs. In it, he explains SOE's (and other studios') shift toward a free-to-play model lets MMOs keep up with an ever-changing industry. But the talk actually went beyond the notion of free-to-play and into the larger picture of how SOE is reinventing its games to include more emergent gameplay and take advantage of new trends in media. Read on for a broad look at the past decade of trends in the industry and a glimpse of what the future holds for SOE titles.
GDC Online 2012: SWTOR, Diablo III, Koster honored in GDC Online awards
Wednesday night saw the Game Developers Choice Online awards being handed out to MMO, social, mobile, and free-to-play games. Star Wars: The Old Republic came away with the awards for best online game design, best online visual arts, best online technology, and best new online game. Riot Games won for best live game, the audience award, and best community relations for League of Legends. Raph Koster was officially recognized with an online game legend award, and World of Warcraft received a hall of fame award. Blizzard also scored with Diablo III, receiving an award for having the best audio for an online game. The award for best social network game went to Draw Something, and thatgamecompany won an online innovation award for Journey. Massively sent two plucky game journalists -- Beau Hindman and Karen Bryan -- to Austin, Texas, for this year's GDC Online, where they'll be reporting back on MMO trends, community theory, old favorites, and new classics. Stay tuned for even more highlights from the show!
GDC Online 2012: CCP on keeping players cheaply
Sandboxes get a lot of flak in today's themepark-dominated MMO industry. That said, sandbox developers who do it right will be laughing all the way to bank, according to CCP senior designer Matthew Woodward. Woodward recently gave a talk at GDC Online titled The Other White Meat: Design Architecture for Sandbox Games. The presentation focused on the three pillars used by the firm to power its long-running EVE Online MMORPG. Woodward stressed social aspects, goals and goal-driven players, and most importantly, emergent gameplay. "The big win is that emergence is cheap. A lot of emergent gameplay discussion is about the One Big Moment. In EVE, the big heist that happened six years ago, in Ultima Online, the assassination of Lord British," Woodward explained. "If you do this well, people will play your game forever. People will pay for it forever." Massively sent two plucky game journalists -- Beau Hindman and Karen Bryan -- to Austin, Texas, for this year's GDC Online, where they'll be reporting back on MMO trends, community theory, old favorites, and new classics. Stay tuned for even more highlights from the show!
GDC Online 2012: Age of Wushu gets a new trailer
Age of Wushu's sporting a new trailer at this week's GDC Online convention, and the clip features nearly three minutes' worth of wall-scaling, roof-running, kung-fu-fighting fun. If you can take your eyes off the aerial hijinks for a moment or two, you'll also get a glimpse of AoW's gorgeous environments, which run the gamut from snowy mountainscapes to sunlit gorges and idyllic ancient Chinese villages. Age of Wushu is a free-to-play sandbox title currently scheduled for a North American release in May of 2013. See the trailer in its entirety after the cut.
GDC Online 2012: Raph Koster's keynote on a Theory of Fun, 10 years later
Ten years ago at GDC, Raph Koster gave a talk called A Theory of Fun. The presentation turned into a book, and after a series of printings and reprintings, that book has arguably become the best-selling game design book of all time. At GDC Online this week, Koster revisited his Theory of Fun to look at what still applies and what's changed. Read on for highlights from this GDC keynote address.
GDC Online 2012: Gamigo showcases Otherland and Grimlands
This week at GDC Online, Gamigo showed off the progress in not one but two of its upcoming titles. Otherland, based on the novels by Tad Williams, has begun to pick up pace lately, with a series of closed beta events in Europe. Meanwhile, Grimlands has also made quite a bit of progress and is working out the finer details as it nears release. Massively sat down with Gamigo CEO Patrick Streppel to get a firsthand look at both games. Read on for highlights from both the Otherland and Grimlands demos!
GDC Online 2012: ArenaNet's Cameron Dunn on programming the next generation online world
You might know every last detail about Tyria and the Asura, but at GDC this week, ArenaNet's Technical Director Cameron Dunn gave a sneak peek behind the curtain and showed how the nuts and bolts of Guild Wars 2 are constructed to bring the best gameplay and performance to players on launch day and beyond. He revealed some of the ways in which his team uses metrics and tools to streamline gameplay, test bugs, and pinpoint problem areas as efficiently as possible. For a look at what goes on behind the game, read on for panel highlights!
