GDC2011: A Fabulous Drift, Part 3

March 22, 2011 12:08 am Sir Haxington Game Development, Games for Fun, Gaming, Life

Part 2, found here in case you missed it.

Thursday morning was all about recharging the batteries. With some sweet sessions lined up and some awesome parties later in the evening, it was time to take ‘er easy.

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Industry Lessons Learned and Applying Them to the Road Ahead presented by Cliff Bleszinski of Epic games was first up on the docket.

CliffyB gets a bad rap with the haters, of which there are plenty. When I walked in, a group of 40-something media types were already starting with the negativity, sitting in the back corner of the room as I walked in.

“Oh, what’s he wearing? His hair looks douched up.”

And so on. Everyone all aboard the CliffyB hate train, right guys? Cause that’s cool!

Anyway, I thought Bleszinski gave a really great talk, one of my favorites from the entire conference, actually. I felt like he was being honest and just speaking from the heart, and really that’s what I want to hear from people at GDC.

In essence, his talk was all about being a “Power Creative” and how to create and control your IPs. He basically said all the things I wanted to hear from someone in his position, and I think also confirmed in my mind why I think he’s as successful as he is (see: speaking being honest and speaking from the heart, above).

Bleszinski started out by saying it’s important to find people who complement you. Not like “Hey, nice hat,” but more like “If you’re the artistic type, hang out with more programmers” and vice-versa. It’s important to find people who have different personalities and abilities than you. It’s also important to build mutual respect between yourself and those around you. Pretty obvious stuff, but good to hear anyway.

Delegation is huge. People in creative and or powerful positions are usually driven and want to do much of the work themselves. So the obvious answer is to delegate work  to others. Remember that who building mutual respect thing? Yeah, proper execution of delegation requires respect.

Bleszinski told everyone to find people who are honest with you. This has been a mantra for my life, and for those around me. I feel that honesty is probably one of my best qualities, and I can’t stand to be around dishonest folks. Part of the reason I never worry about my future is due to how honest I am with others, and how others treat me as a result. On the flip-side, the best times I’ve had in my career have been working around groups of honest, and frankly, blunt people. Good advice from Cliff here speaking from personal experience.

Making your project personal and getting inspiration from your life is important to your project as well. Like I’ve mentioned before, drawing from personal experience and getting creative inspiration from that which is unique to you is what drives passion. His example was from Gears of War as the main character, Marcus has daddy issues. Bleszinski and some of the other leads were having dinner one night and talking about life, when they one by one found out that they all had similar, sad stories about their fathers. As a reflection of their own lives, Marcus too has the same issues as many of the leads on the team. Either on purpose or accidentally, they projected their own life experience onto Marcus which meant they created a more human character.

Bleszinski went on to talk about “Soft Sales” and the importance of being able to sell your ideas as a designer. He also talked about the “The Authority Stick” vs. “The Chain of Excitement” when getting stuff done. So, you can either tell people forcefully what to do, or you can build excitement and hype around your project internally.You can use the Authority Stick, but overuse will hose you in the long run, so you’ll lose respect. Better to build excitement to get people motivated to work on your team. Plus, if you can’t get the team excited about what you’re working on, how will gamers or the press or PR or the media get exited?

Speaking of PR and marketing, they are just as important to the success of your game as any thing else. You want people to buy your game right? CliffyB doesn’t beat around the bush here, saying that games are a business, intended to make money, so working with marketing is a good thing, and they shouldn’t be shunned because you might have some “damn the man” attitude about advertising or corporations and what not. On top of that, YOU should be out there marketing and selling the game as well! Which means you can’t be afraid of the public, you need thick skin for what people will say about you and that you should brand yourself. You’re a unique individual with a lot to offer right? At one point he said “I may not be the best, but you know me.” Oh Cliffy, I’ll have your babies any day.

For me, the real baby-making moment is what he says next: Remember the team. Yes, there are many people working with you day in and day out, toiling for years over the most minor details, staying late hours, dealing with office drama and so on. They helped make the game with you, so don’t take sole credit. Stay humble. He points out that if you go look at his interviews online, he almost never says “I,” but always says “We.” Hells yeah. He also loves his fans too, and tells devs they should be out there meeting and thanking them since they’re the ones shilling out all that cash and making our awesome lives possible. Couldn’t agree more.

Anyway, he talked about many other things I could go out about, but to sum up quickly:

• Developers should be more involved in the creation of their IP, from logo design to viral marketing campaigns (don’t just let PR / marketing handle it).
• RIP one track mind. People use lots of devices and multitask now, even 40 year olds.
• “Freemium” and “Snack” gaming are viable models for games now.
• Make gamers “marry” your game. Develop long term IPs but rewarding early, often, and for long term.
• The best IP ideas start as a joke. How easy is it to make fun of you ideas? Those are usually the best. See: Chainsaw guns, dicktits, and Cole Train.
• Think about the 10 year rule: Vampires are cool again! Put new spins on old ideas.
• Mysterious characters and places are cool and facilitate Internet churn. Don’t try to answer everything!
• And more.

So fuck that haters. Cliffy, keep doing your thang, it seems to be working out just fine.

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Design in Detail: Tuning the Muzzle Velocity of the Plasma Rifle Bolt on Legendary Difficulty Across the HALO Franchis by Jaime Griesemer, an ex-Bungie designer. AKA the longest talk title ever created.

Now, I could go into a lot of detail here. But instead, I’m going to be lazy and point you to Jaime’s awesome blog, which has most of this stuff broken down better than I can possibly explain.

In short, it was a great talk and cool to see his insight on breaking down game design. He’s a student of psychology which is super important for designers to learn and understand. We understand your brain better than you. It’s the reason we are fun to hang out with but impossible to live with.

Ahem.

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Data Analysis on Player Behavior in EVE ONLINE presented by Eyjolfur Gudmundsson (CCP) was my last talk of the day. Say that name ten times fast. Yeah, thought so.

So, I generally try to go to some different talks to mix things up. I can speak “programmer” so I thought I might get something out of this. Really, it was all about data gathering and looking for trends and anomalies and such to prevent hackers from wrecking the economy of their MMO. That was pretty much all I got out of it, not a lot I didn’t know already.

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After a long day of talks, I’m getting hungry. More texts from people to go out and eat with them. One of our producers suggests Crustacean which is supposed to be a killer seafood joint. I’m down, and I end up grabbing a few old friends including Chris Pruett, a Google Android Mobile Games Evangelist or some such. I just call him “Big Time.” We went to college together and is the smartest programmer I know, even though he won’t admit it. We meet with some 343 folks and some of Chris’ buddies. One guy teaches about games at MIT, and we end up talking about our love for the Terminator IP over some stuffed calamari and drunken crab. Making friends is fun and delicious! Can I just say how honored I am to get be around such awesome and smart people on a regular basis?

But all good things must come to an end and we’re late for the 343 Mixer, where my studio offers up drinks and food and tries to meet more industry folks. Eventually we get there where the sushi bar is in full effect, and people are drinking “Guilty Sparks.” Everyone is having a good time, and I end up bumping into some of the Treyarch folks. I congratulate them on their success, they tell me I’m looking great from running. Hells yeah, I’ll drink to that.

After some crazy photos in the photobooth set up at the party, wearing Spartan helmets and using other various props in… interesting ways, we decide to make our way to the Microsoft party down at the Temple lounge.

Ahhhh the Temple. Old friend, I can never get enough of you. What’s this been? Three? Four GDCs now? And every one a blast here. The Battlefield 3 party was also here earlier in the week, but they reconfigured the space to accommodate a different crowd. Still, lots of great food being catered which is necessary to soak up all the free drinks. I end up meeting and hanging out with some Respawn folks (although my boys aren’t there this year which saddens me greatly), people from Harmonix, Sony, and ooooh boy here go the vodka sodas again.  Why are we all hugging again?

Think about that though, I work at Microsoft but I have friends at Google and Sony? What’s that all about? Shouldn’t people be freaking out about this? Oh wait, no one cares because people want to create sensational stories where there aren’t any. Suck it media! We’re all friends muahahahaha!

Anyway, good times were had and people probably have pictures of me doing semi-obscene things just like every year. Then we’re off to Denny’s since its like 2am and drinks are no longer being poured. Our party of nine can’t get seated so we wait and wait, then finally a few other 343 folks and I say “Screw this! Bed time!” and skip the horrible late night meal. Lucky us, as some people got intestinally owned the next day. Bullet dodged.

On the way out, we see a few of the Mega 64 guys sitting there in the Denny’s with us looking trashed. I yell out “Peace out Mega 64!” and Rocco Botte nods as we walk out.

On days (and nights) like this, I try not to forget how lucky I am. This is what GDC is all about.

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Part 4? Really? There’s more? Maybe one day…