glinert's blog

The Game Developer's Conference, GDC for short, is the annual meeting of the entire video games industry: from studio executives to indie developer to academics, just about everyone who works with games for a living either attends or follows the proceedings. Last year I covered some of the more interesting presentations; this year I'll discuss some of the prevalent themes to come out of the conference.

GAMBIT, the Singapore-MIT Games Lab that works closely with the Education Arcade, has released it's first round of video games. Developed over the summer by a group of 40+ Singaporean and MIT students, the half dozen experimental games all have different research goals. Check out the GAMBIT website for downloads!

Want to be on the cutting edge of game development? Do you like trying out new games before they come out? Then volunteer to playtest a new audio based user interface being developed at the Ed Arcade! We're looking for sighted and visually impaired individuals to help test it on the week of May 7th.

Contact Eitan at glinert-at-mit-dot-edu for more information.

Testers should live within an hour of MIT, and need to be able to come to campus on their own. To apply, please send Eitan e-mail at the above address, and include your availability during the week of the 7th, your proximity to MIT, and your level of vision.

For the past four days I've brought you coverage of GDC and tried to focus on different aspects of the conference, starting with serious games, then independent game development, followed by coverage of the "big" companies out there including Sony and Nintendo, and then women in gaming. Today, on my last day, I'm going to get into news related to my own research in game accessibility. But what is "Game Accessibility"? It seems to be one of those terms getting thrown around a lot in the industry, especially over the past week. Simply put, there are a huge number of disabled people out there; according to the 2000 American census, 19% of individuals aged 16 - 64 had some form of disability, be it physical or mental. Accessibility refers to games that are designed with this large group in mind, so that they can play along with everyone.

If I had to sum up Playstation's GDC message in one sentance, it would be: "The PS3 really is super awesome, check out all this cool stuff we have in the pipeline!" If you asked me to do the same for Nintendo, though, it would probably be "We're friends - let's talk about our design philosophy so you can learn from it." Personally, I find the latter message a bit more appealing as it is more tangible, and, quite frankly, the Wii has more credibility in my book at the time being (though I do want the PS3 to succeed on the same level as it's predecessor.)

That said, it wouldn't have killed Nintendo to make a *few* more announcements. With the exception of a multiplayer playable demo of the new Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, I didn't see or hear anything truly exciting. As for Phantom, while the single player game certainly looks like a fun DS version of the Wind Waker, the multiplayer part wasn't terribly impressive. At it's core a fun "hide-and-seek" concept, it is strictly one on one, and damningly has NO ELEMENT OF ZELDA GAMEPLAY. There are no swords, no boomerangs, and no dive-rolls with a pleasurable "HAA!" In fact, you could replace link and all the other objects in the game with kittens and dogs, the game would look the same. As a result, the functionality seems tacked on, and makes me wonder why they didn't take more time to really get that Zelda feel that we fans love so much.

GDC proper kicked off today, with all the commotion and fanfare you'd expect from some ten thousand plus obsessed gamers. Phil Harrison, the president of Sony Worldwide Studios, started the show with a memorable keynote on what's next for the currently ailing PS3. Not just a preview of some cool games, Phil announced a company shift to focus on user-centric entertainment in the vein of YouTube, Second Life, or MySpace. But how does Sony hope to get people involved?

Making video games isn’t easy. Well, that’s not entirely true; if you’re EA or Microsoft, and you have a huge number of developers and producers, and you have a money vault filled with gold coins you can swim through a la “Ducktales,” then it’s actually not that difficult. But for the rest of us, for the “Indie” developers out there, making games is a Herculean task. Frequently, independents have to work with a minimal or non-existent budget, a team that is too small and too inexperienced for the task, and usually have to take time off from development to spend time on other distractions, like classes or a job.

Here at GDC, these developers are getting a voice, and for good reason, as they are responsible for the majority of the games out there (even if many of them you haven’t heard of.) A small number of the games, like Second Life, manage to take hold and become a phenomenon. More of them graduate to “casual” online games, and if they’re lucky get linked to by a portal website and make a modest return on a few hundred/thousand downloads. The majority, though, never see the light of day. That’s why the conference has such as focus on making sure that the independents out there can learn what they need to know to at least help their chances of success.

For five days, Game Developer’s Conference is a zoo of exciting discussion, innovative ideas, and social networking that becomes the focal point of many gamer’s lives, including my own. I’m Eitan Glinert, and for the next week I’ll be covering the conference from warm, sunny San Francisco.

All of next week (March 4th - 9th) bloggers from TEA will be brining you updates on the Games Developer Conference and Serious Games Summit from warm, sunny San Francisco. This year's conference looks like it will cover tons of interesting topics, ranging from the latest in educational gaming, to upcoming releases, to game accessibility.

Check back every day for new posts!