Game Design Geek

I finally got Rudy out of bed for breakfast on time this morning.  We had a long day ahead of us and we needed to get a jump on things.  So, we made our way down to one of the meeting rooms for breakfast with the Xaviant guys and had a pretty nice breakfast even though Dan was distraught by the lack of bacon.  There was some very light hearted discussion about a few of the guys that weren’t on the trip with us, and it was sad as I think they would have loved it.

So, today was not so jam packed, but I was definitely going to get as many sessions in today as I could, and do a good job of parsing out ones that I don’t need or that might not be relevant.  On the previous day I looked at some stuff in the Mobile games area since that’s where the AI sessions are setup this year and some of it was rather interesting, but most of it was pretty much crap.  People hawking some services to developers that are already on a nonexistent if not tight budget.  I guess it goes in line with, “A fool and his money are soon parted”.  And anyone that pays 20k for 24hours of banner ads for a free iPhone app with no sales guarantee….is higher then a kite.

So, lets get started about what sessions I hit.

• Suspending Disbelief: Bringing your characters to life with better AI was very interesting.  In fact this was one that I really wanted Mike Howard, our technical animator and resident movement genius to attend. (along with utility theory).  There were a lot of great ideas given on techniques you could use to make the AI more interesting.  None of them I have yet to hear about, or try.  Mostly telegraphing all your movements and having varying levels of awareness.  We had a lot of this in Getting Up, and I think it really didn’t get noticed by the player most times since the player would b-line to the enemies mostly.  Those types of nuances were lost in GU, but I think we can totally take advantage of them in our current game.
• Promoting and Monetizing your App: Finding success in Mobile was a session from Admob.  They are a company that puts banners in mobile apps that can drive a lot of traffic to your app, or you can make money advertising other apps inside yours.  I found this to be a very insightful presentation, and I have video of this one since I really wanted to go back later and watch it when I need to reference it.  There were some interesting things talked about there about strategies for marketing your app.  Mostly its all about keeping your app in the top 50.  Which right now is tough considering to make it into the top 50 you need at least 15-20k downloads a day.  And thats a lot, even with 70 million units out there, and the fact that your app is free.  The ROI is around 8-15%  and the price varies, but they were touting between 10k-20k.  The strategy is to drive clicks from your free app, to your pay app.  IE: every-time they click on the banners it sends them to your pay app.

• Deciding on an AI Architecture: Which tool for the job? was one I think Ben was very focused on.  The panel were split into 4 camps.  Each camp was a fan of a given type of AI architecture.  The moderator was given certain game types and the panel were asked to plead the case of why their system would be a good choice for that game.  A lot of it was opinions, but there were some concrete answers to tough questions.  I think Ben now has a better idea of what’s available to us out there.  Now its going to come down to what are we going to choose.
• One Year in the App Store: A case study of backflip studios was one I passed on….I’m getting tired of hearing about other peoples luck stories.
• AI architecture mash-ups: Insights into intertwined architecture was a very insightful session because it gave an insight to us that we don’t have to stick to one AI system.  I know a lot of programmers are very structure oriented and don’t like to mix and match.  This session really did delve into the nuances of how many differing systems could be used for a common goal.  I really think that having said that, we should be definitely looking at this is a viable option moving forward on our current project.
• Answering the designers’ AI wish list was more or less a panel of AI programmers answering pre-asked questions from industry heavy hitter designers.  I found this to be pretty useless.  I knew what the answers to all these questions were going to be, and these are the same questions I have asked over the years.  But its cool to know that I’m not the only one asking them.

So, there ya go.  The AI summit was only for two days thank god.  I have to say that it can be rather dry, and pretty much pretty standard if you have attended any of them before.  You pretty much knew what it was going to be like.  So, I cant say there were anything new or exciting to talk about or see that I have yet to see before.  I was hoping to see something amazing or new, but that never happened.

After the summit ended I made my way back to the hotel to meet up with the guys and have dinner.  This time it was at a french restaurant, and I didn’t understand anything on the menu.  Ill say that Im pretty adventurous when it comes to food, but there was nothing on that entire menu that I found appealing or interesting.  But the conversation at dinner was great, and I had a great time.  And again, came back to the room and passed out.  Although a few of the guys had drink or two…..

Borracho!

The start of this trip involved fitting 13 guys in a van to the airport.  It truly felt like a clown car, and I’m sure we were breaking some kind of law.  I was sitting on a seat meant for two with one cheek basically off the seat and using the door to prop me up from falling outta the van.  But the discomfort wasn’t over by far people.  When we made it to the airport, the gate we were at must have had the heat turned up to like 90 degrees.  In the words of Rudy, “Its hotter then Satan’s balls”  One bright spot was getting through security was amazingly painless, and boarding the plane wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be either considering I was almost last to get on.

I will say that the flight seemed really long since Ben and I who are probably the two biggest guys in the company sat next to each other.  Not sure how that happened, but after that I was convinced that one of us needs to go on diet.  Personally I vote Ben, but I have been on a scale lately so I think Im probably the one that needs Jenny Craig.  Oh, did I forget  to mention on my left was Mike Howard.  He must have felt like he was the meat in a man sandwhich.

Once in San Francisco we checked into the hotel, and proceeded to the Mosconi center to check in and get our badges.  I wasn’t aware, but they had purchased lunch vouchers, that I had not received, and had to go back the next morning and get.  After this we went across the street to Buca de Beppo for dinner, where the CEO proceeded to fatten us up like a thanksgiving turkey.  The man tried to kill me, I’m sure of it.  That is if death by pasta is possible.

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They paired me up with Rudy as a roomate for the hotel, which makes since I guess since we are pretty much joined at the hip for the last 6 years, 4 games, and 4 companies.

Rudy,Chad, and Ray

Tuesday morning and the first day of the conference was very intense.  We meet downstairs in the lobby with the entire Xaviant team and had breakfast early with the exception of Rudy who as long as I have known him has never woke up before 8am…..ever.  Then we were off to the first conference.  Ben Collier, who is one of our programmers and just generally a cool and funny guy, sat in with me on all of the AI sessions.  Ben is attending the entire AI summit, which I have to admit is akin to sticking a red hot poker in your eye if you aren’t an AI programmer.  But since Ben is…its perfect.  I bounced back and forth between the AI summit and some Mobile Platform stuff, all of which I will cover lightly here.

• Case Studies: AI in recent games was the first talk I sat in for the day.  This AI summit talk was very interesting.  They had a show of hands of who was attending and I was by a show of hands the only designer there.  Everyone else was an AI programmer.  And they did cover what a rarity it was that I was there and that it was encouraging.  Mostly because most designers tend to not be as technically minded Im assuming.  I have to say that the talks from the programmer on brutal legend gave some interesting information about the processes they went through with 50+ differing AI unit types and their struggles with doing cooperative AI and individual vs formation based tactics.
• Behavior Trees: Three ways of cultivating strong AI was the second session from the AI Summit and I felt the most telling as far as bias to systems for AI.  The major speaker did his masters thesis on this subject and was really drinking the coolaide as far as using behavior trees.  I think he had some valid points, but also he was very caught up on the game and platform on which he was developing for instead of thinking about how this system wouldnt be optimal for everyones project.  I have some differing thoughts on this and I might write some of those thoughts later on in my book discussing programmer biases.
• Fastest Path from concept to top paid was next, and this was basically the Unity engine pitch.  I gotta tell ya I’m nothing but impressed by this engine.  I have evaluated a lot of game engines and tool sets and this one is top notch for a standard set, much less a mobile targeted engine.  This baby is going to be huge and the pricing model is more than affordable.  I think this is definitely the designers engine of choice right now for mobile platforms for sure.  And once the 3.0 version hits, its going to get even better.
• Why so wary of AI middle-ware? was probably the most contentious of the day.  There was a panel of 4 developers and out of them only 2 had actually shipped with AI middle ware, the other evaluated then had the Middle-ware developer do the engine integration, and the final person had never done it and just evaluated it and said it was the devil.  Lots of bias and prejudices where thrown around and I have to tell ya, at times a great many programmers shock me how they really think they are better then everyone else, and that they are right and you’re an idiot.
• Bringing Unreal3 to Apple’s iPhone platform was another session that I attended.  It was an overview of how Epic brought the Unreal3 engine to iPhone.  Sadly, it was a major disappointment.  I’m a an Unreal3 fanboy, not just because Ive shipped a next gen title on it, but because its buttery goodness on many, many fronts.  But how they have it setup to deploy on iPhone is at best, a joke.  They look at the apple and specifically Xcode, as a hindrance.  I got up after the whole presentation and asked the Epic engineer that did this deployment if they were going to port the tools to mac and he looked at me like I was on crack.  “No, why would we do that?”  That wasn’t the response I was looking for to be honest.  So, as for iPhone, Unreal is dead to me.   Unity is looking like the best bet for mobile for sure and I really do have to say its priced on planet earth compared to Epic’s pricing model which involves giving up your first born.
• Application Stores: What you should know before getting started Was an absolute waste of my time.  I thought this was going to give some very insightful information.  I really would like to see these talks given by the horses mouth and not some marketing weenie from some company that put some apps on the store.  Totally useless, non-formation….I want that hour of my life back.
• AI Developers Rant! was actually the last AI Summit meeting for the day and it was very light hearted ravings about a few things that bother some of the AI programmers on the panel like “custom scripting languages” and how there is a new one every week and they all suck.  Another rant was on game reviewers and their utter lack of understanding on what AI really is and how to tell whether AI is good or bad.  Very cool, and nice to see some of the AI programmers have a sense of humor about things.

And after all these lovely sessions were through I went back to the hotel and met up with the Xaviant crew for dinner at a steak house in the mall not far from the hotel.  And at Dinner I sat with Charles our Director of Technology and Ben Collier who is one of our programmers and we had a pretty lively debate.  I think it was the first time I really started to feel like I was communicating with the Charles.  And needless to say…after that I was pooped.  Off to the hotel to catch some Zzzz’s and do it all over again tomorrow.

You know its really hard to believe its 2010.  I say that and it still doesn’t register, in fact, since 2000 every passing year feels strange that way.  Writing down only confirms how weird it is.  And just how quickly the years sneak up on us, yet again so does the Game Developers Conference.  This year will prove to be very interesting, and Im hoping that I will learn a few things, meet some old friends and maybe make some new ones.

After GDC ends on Saturday Ill be heading down to San Diego to see Austin, as its been a while for us.  I do really miss him and Im sure he feels the same.  Im hoping the weather is good and that we get a full good day together at least.  Ill be wheels up Monday morning and back out to Atlanta.   So I wont be spending a lot of time with him.

The iPhone game is coming along really fast.  I redoubled my efforts the last few weeks to finish it before the release of the iPad so I could devote my spare time to getting that up and running as fast as possible.  Not sure what kind of iPad game Im going to do, but rest assured its going to be interesting none the less.  When the iPhone game is ready for prime time I’ll post it here so people can get it.