Note: Full coverage to come later of course, but here are some quick impressions to tide everyone over.
So I made it to Montreal okay, a few slight hiccups still but I made it. I found my hotel and checked in - it's a nice cozy little row house converted into a bed and breakfast-type thing. I'm up on the 4th level at the top which is nice because I don't have to worry about people trouncing around above me, but which also sucks because the WiFi keeps cutting in and out since the router is on the ground floor. Go figure. Anyways I forget the price per night but I think it's like $47, which is great. They're renovating but it doesn't really affect me and the room looks real nice, with lights all over the place on dimmer switches. It's an easier walk conference venue than I thought too, tho I did get lost getting there today.
My first lecture of the day, since I arrived at lunch time, was Jonathan Blow's keynote speech. I was trying to take photos when Jason Della Rocca, head of the IGDA, bumped my elbow from behind to announce his presence. He's a funny guy. Har har [wink]. Jonathan talked about how we're beginning to affect human culture through games much the same way books and then movies did in years past and how powerful that makes us, but also a reminder that we have to start being more careful of the messages we send through our games. This actually echoed part of Don Daglow's lecture from the IGDA Leadership Forum. Jonathan also talked about architecture and exploration in game design, in this segment he took great pleasure in dissecting Bioware's Bioshock and showing us why the game actually sucked, in his opinion. It was an interesting talk.
Next talk was by James Gwertzman from Popcap Games, he talked about Popcap's approach to the ever-expanding casual market space, talking about various business models, from subscription to micro-transaction to download, giving the cost analysis and ups/downs of each. Also how to leverage multiple platforms, like taking time to design a game for each platform's unique strengths and how people can play your game on one platform and buy it on another. The fact that they don't have any sort of advertising/marketing department and instead rely on viral marketing/word of mouth, have no schedules and no budgets, really brings home the impact a small team can have. True, Popcap is a large company, but they are broken up internally into many small teams. After the talk I was able to catch up briefly with Dave Perry, who was also attending the lecture. I'll be covering his keynote Wed morning.
Next up was a talk from Randy Smith from EA about how to make your games less prone to players saving constantly, without having to resort to techniques like checkpoints or save areas and the like. He covered the history of the save game, how it started out just as "magic bookmarks" that let the player pick up where he left off as games started to become more complex (obviously PacMan didn't need save games). Next he talked about why people save games, which is to mitigate loss (items, time, experience, etc). Then he covered some mathematical and psychological solutions to decrease the risk players face of losing terribly. Luckily he posted up his email so I can get the slides, because he diagrammed a lot. For some reason I had the distinct impression I attended a talk like this at a previous GDC as well. After this talk I ran into my friend Darius Kazemi from Orbus Gameworks.
Last lecture of the day was from Jim Sink from Microsoft, he's one of the people who reviews XBox Live Arcade games. Yes, yes - another lecture on how to get your game on XBLA (I also covered ones this year from GDC and OGDC). Rest assured though that this wasn't the same old stuff rehashed - well, maybe a teeny bit I recognized from earlier sessions. The majority however was Jim's candid information on how to increase your chances of being selected for publishing on XBLA. He gave a lot more depth and detail into the process of submission and mistakes that other people have made (including Microsoft - "Lumines" anyone?). Plus, things change - for example in earlier sessions they've said localization is optional, now E-FIGS + Japanese is required. Microsoft will provide the localization services though so luckily that just means a slightly longer dev time and more thought in pre-production to handling multiple languages (less menu text and more icons, for example).
Booth Crawl was the next item on the agenda. It wasn't anything supremely spectacular as the expo is pretty tiny, but they still had free drinks, and you could enter and leave and enter and leave and just stock up on the drink tickets. Whoo hoo! Who am I kidding tho, as I don't drink. Oh well more sodas for me :P I walked around a bit but there weren't any cool grabs, just the usual assortment of pens and pads and such. Got enough of those. Played a little Wii Zelda with the Zapper, and chilled at a table with Darius and his friend Darron and a few of the FlashBang Studios guys who were in attendance.
The last and final event of the nite was the party hosted by the IGDA, where Danny Ledonne's movie "Playing Columbine" was screened for the first time in front of a public audience. It wasn't even the final cut, just a "fine cut". I saw some of "Moral Kombat" at the VGExpo - that was more of a film just for general audiences. This film is definetly for game developers just as much as it is for general audiences, which is great because there are plenty of people in the industry who need to be woken up to what's happening out there as a result of "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" I mean I was woken up for sure, finally hearing the whole story behind that and it's affect on last year's Slamdance gaming competition. Heck I didn't even realize how many more games like it there were out there - shooting JFK, pedofiliac priests, re-living the 9-11 attacks... I definetly encourage you to find it and watch it when it's finally released.
Okay that's it for Day One. Tomorrow are Dave Perry and Chris Hecker keynotes, the new EIDOS studio tour, Danny Ledonne and Don Daglow's lectures, and the Gamma 256 event.
