Live GDC Reporting from San Jose

#21 Yeah I like this photo..


Rick is amused by the Unreal Technology sign.



In just a few months Torque will look just as good and literally cost 1/1000th the price. Can you belive that? Torque really is 1000 times less expensive and will be just as good. Actually it will be better, Torque netcode kicks Unreals butt today.

#22 Amazing stuff these guys are doing. Talk about a quick way to lower your budget. I don't see a reason why big companies shouldn't buy the Torque Engine instead of plopping down all that cash.

#23 There's a nice interview with a (former) head of game development at Microsoft --- actually several publishers, but one of his quotes was the most interesting. They (used to) take the opinion that a developer's not worth anything if they can't build their own engine from scratch. I think it's also a case of a publisher (like Microsoft) not wanting to be liable for bugs in someone else's code.

But what results is a massive "not built here" complex --- something which can't persist for much longer IMHO. 10 years ago, when I first started building games professionally, creating your own engine was largely a case of rasterizing your own polygons, and deciding whether you'd go with a slower perspective-correct algorithm or become skewed with a less-correct linear interpolation. Or if you'd just do a 2.5-D game with a raycasting engine. No, they weren't simple, but a couple of guys could whip out a reasonably competitive engine in about 3 months.

Engines now are HUGE undertakings, especially as you are now combining multiple texture maps, or doing custom shaders, internet networking, and worlds with bazillions of polygons with polygon-level collision detection. Building one from scratch with the feature set today's gamers (at least the hardcore gamers) demand takes a lot longer. You can still get better results if you custom-design one for your particular game. But I wonder if the "not built here" stigma might be going away soon, especially with how popular the Unreal engine has become with developers, and the potential of Torque for commercial development.

We shall see. Gonna be an interesting couple o' years...

#24 @Jay, I attended the Game Connection where developers got to pitch their games to the publishers. Seems to me that building your own game ngine is cool and they like that, but more important to them is that you have a finished product with no hidden costs. IE they dont have to foot the $500k for the unreal engine license.

What was important to them was original IP. They did not want to pay tremendous amount to license Harry Potter. They wanted a complete game that ran on the PS2 most of all. BUt if it ran on the PS2, other consoles and PC too that was a plus. For the most part they were looking to scoop up cheap games that would sell well.

They are also focused on Harry Potter games etc.... too but they had their own dev houses they have already selected for that. So in a nut shell a finished game with original IP was great. They really liked the fact that Burger Wars was built on a proven game engine with great netcode. Konami said my online strategy was way ahead of their own. My online strategy involved Torque netcode and persistent charcters. No big deal to me, but a big deal to them.

#25 The GG guys have packed up and left for home. This is a pic of the van they are traveling in.... not to bad eh? They were modifying the TNL so they could get on IRC and chat wirelessly from the van last I heard. Maybe Ben was looking to download pron of his apple headed dream girl.


Maye Joe at Brave Tree could give us a sketch.

More GDC Photos HERE

#26 Incase you are wondering who is working on the new shader engine its Ben and Brian. Ben is seen chatting with Phil Carlisle who devloped the famous Worms 2D and 3D games.

#27 Ben in graphics is scary :-P

#28 @Pat: I'll have you know that the nVidia guys were very taken by my linked list pixels... ;)

#29 Indeed it is, Pat :)

#30 Thanks for the pics and report, looks very very cool and wish i coulda been there, but I would have been killed by my gf spending spring break w/o her...

and yes, the GG folks are way cool. They do belive in basically giving away an engine and having to work day jobs which is beyond honorable. I truly hope this makes em all mucho dinero.



peace,

-s

#31 Thanks for the pics Britton. You got the back of my head in some of them in the nVidia theater shots :)

It was great to meet everyone, just too bad I didn't get a chance to talk to you guys any more than I did.

Cory

#32 Cory, Maybe you could post the pic and circle the back of your head so we could recognize you if we ever saw the back of your head again in the future. Would have been cool to chat with you!

I really enjoyed meeting the GG guys. They were a ray of sunshine in an other wise downer of a GDC. It was my first GDC and I attended some of the events. The upshot is that many of the publishers and game developers have over invested recently in companies, technologies, and games. The publishers have been burned and they are cautious on investing in a new game. The game connection was great and nothing is better than a face to face with an interested publisher. Here is what the publishers are looking for these days.

1. Console Games. PS2 games especially.
2. Finished Game / or Solid Demo.
3. Game Demo in a DVD box with a well written pitch sheet.
4. Large 2 X 3 Posters of the game.
5. Kids Games
6. Unique IP

This was my experience of the GDC and Game Connection and what I gathered from the publishers I met. I'm listing the points in no particluar order. Just some good nuggets of information.

1. Pulishers seemed to be looking for completed games that would be low risk to publish and that had original IP so they would not have to pay any huge license fees.

2. I attended a session that had several heads of various game developement companies, Elixir, Relic (Home World) and 3 other well known game companies that started out as low budget indies. They all said the same thing. Now is the absolute worst time to start a game company and try to find funding or a publisher. They were very negative on the current condition on the gaming industry.

3. Many publishers and dev shops have down sized. Infrogrames dumped a bunch of developers in France Ubisoft and Secret level had layoffs too. These seasoned developers have started their own game companies and were some of the best prepared at the game connection. Lots of new indie dev shops have sprung up everywhere. This means seasoned professionals are competing against the green horn newbies like us for the attention of the publishers.

4. There is a tremendous demand for new games on PC and Console platforms. EA is one of the few publishers investing in new games. The state of the industry seems to represent a real disconnect from the publishers and retailers to the high demand of the consumers.

5. The bigger the publisher, the less they know about games. Sad but true. I asked the publishers if they knew what an engine "Modification" was. I'd ask them if they knew what a "First Person Shooter" was and some basic questions about their knowledge of video games. I did this to get a feel for how to pitch the game to them. It was important to me to clearly communicate the ideas behind my game and why I thought it was going to be successful and I did not want to use terminology they did not understand. I was amazed at how little the big publishers knew. I'd go through a list of games like Doom or Quake and they would recognize the name but not the genre or probably anything about how the game was played. My guess is that most of them never played a PC game other than solitare in their life.

In many ways the GDC was dissapointing. The Garage Games guys were about the only ones with a clue. They rest of the booths there reminded me of a really rich snobish frat party were everyone was too busy trying to impress everyone and look cool to chat with eachother. I dunno. It seems that the current leaders in the game industry have lost touch with the players and themselves.

#33 Tribes 3 vengence was cool. The GG guys from the Dynamix days that worked on tribes I and II said it was really good and played like tribes I.

Now for the rumors and GDC gossip... this did not come from the GG guys, it came from some of the attendies I met in various places but it was said that the loser (some guy named QIX or something like that) who ruined game play from Tribes 2 moved on to Sony and ruined Planetside. It was also mentioned that PlanetSide behaved like the Tribes2 engine and had some of the same bugs... almost as if that same guy ran off with some of the source code. It was said that he tried to ruin Tribes 2 with stupid ideas like waiting in line for stuff, and that he got to realize his dream with planet side. Everyone said that Planet Side was nothing more than endless wasting of time waiting in lines and routine repition which lead to very little game play and lots of frustration.

My take on the whole thing is that there was way to much pessimism and negativity at the GDC. One the one hand the publishers are lost the developers are bitter, and on the other the technology is getting much better and the gamers want new games. What this says to me is that there is a changing of the guards. These guys are so focused on losing and licking their wounds that they wont even notice us (the new happy optomistic and creative indies) take the industry away from them.

#34 There is never a good time to try anything new, or start a new venture. There are always problems with the market, or publishers or whatever. So because there is never a good time to start anything, you might as well just jump in. Make it a good time to have the next great idea.

Be ready to make your own luck.

smiles . . .

#35 I went to GDC from '95 to '99. What you describe as far as opinion on the "state of the industry" isn't too different from the doom-and-gloom attitudes back then, either. It seems like there was some wild optimism in '95 about upcoming consoles and the possibilities of those new-fangled 3D cards.

I've got my wild hippy-esque thoughts on that. See, first you had the pioneers... guys that did some wild stuff in a brand-new industry, and sometimes were even able to make a living at it. But it was all about the GAMES. That was how the GDC (then called the CGDC) was founded... I think the first GDC was a couple dozen people in Chris Crawford's living room. Then you had this whole "boom town" craze which started one day when someone woke up and realized that the games were making more money than box-office returns in Hollywood. Everybody was seeing themselves as the next id Software or Nintendo, with millions of dollars sparkling on the horizon. The market got crowded with get-rich-quick executives, profit margins started dropping, the boom town went bust for a lot of people, and the industry MATURED. And, as it did so, it ceased being as fun or as optimistic as it once was.

The thing is, you still have guys from an earlier generation in there who remember (or at least have heard about) the 'old days' of the pioneering era, or of the boom-town period. They don't like to believe those days are gone. Heck, I'm one of 'em... I don't expect (nor want) to see the boom-town era again, but I think the indie arena could be a return to the pioneering days - because I think the potential of the field is a WHOLE lot grander than is currently being serviced by the established industry. But even in the indie arena, the industry's focus on quality and reliability are NOT misplaced. The novelty is over, the craze has passed, and the adoloscent years of the videogame industry are drawing to a close. I think that's what people are feeling... that whole "settling down" thing.

#36 One of the resons companys would be interested in the Unreal tech, is the tool set....
Thats an area we have to work on for Torque.

#37 @Rob, yeah they admitted that part of the reason they succeeded was the fact that they had no idea what the odds of success were. One guy said a business plan of "dumb luck" is not a good idea, but thats how he succeeded. He also refferred to his funding as "dumb money," because the people who invested in him knew less than he did. He said you might be able to find sources of dumb money to help you out but not to count on it.

@Jay, Yes I believe you are correct. The industry has matured meaning it has become a business. Its not fun anymore. Its not original or creative. I have not seen a game in the past year or so that I would want to buy on the major retail shelves, aside from maybe grand theft auto. Most of the stuff I have been interested in have been indie games or game modifications.

@Luke, true. The tools could be a little more user friendly. The GG guys are aware of that too. It was mentioned at the conference by Rick Overman and is on their "to do" list.

#38 By the way Ben is very smart. I have complete faith in his ability to code the terrain and shaders. He seems wise beyond his years. After a 5 minute conversation everyone forgets he is 19 years old. He did a great Job on his part of the presentation too. It was like he had taken a speach class or something.

Oh yeah and by the way Jeff all his expenses are valid. He bought dinner for us on more than one occasion. We were discussing business, while we drank beer and ate pizza that Ben bought us. I think Ben should be given a platinum business card and an expense account. See how smart he is? He buys everyone stuff and they all say how great he is. Ben is destined for success if not in programming then perhaps in sales or politics.

#39 @britton >> I have not seen a game in the past year or so that I would want to buy on the major retail shelves, aside from maybe grand theft auto.

go buy prince of persia sand of time :)

#40 "It was like he had taken a speach class or something."

It was like you had never participated in a spelling bee or something. ;-)

Hey very interesting posts, Britton. Thanks for taking the time to write all these, they're very informative and a real eye opener, especially the "downer" attitude of the industry in general.