2010-03-10 01:12:25
GDC10 session 4 Why Game Veterans flocking into social gaming

Why Game Veterans flocking into
social gaming? Speakers: Brenda Brathwaite, Noah Falstein, Steve Meretzky, Brian
Reynolds


I tried to follow the conversation. So here it is more or
less:

Steve since 28 years in games.
having casual game
experience
wants to go back to smaller teams 4-5 in 4-5 weeks
again.

Brenda boardgames first passion sticked into facebook
games
small group develop a game in short time instead of marriages are going
on babies born during game development

Brain a year was more enough to
make a game he want to be the game designer and the lead programmer again.
Production costs are frighten for AAA games. 10 million is called a medium
budget.

Noah
pretty same kind of story. To big size teams to large
budgets, but good experiences with collaborative work in smaller
teams.

Lower costs frees you to take more risks in creativity.
You can
try a lot of weird things.
This is the best time game developers ever had -
the most variety of opportunities.

Steve:
never predicted farmville
would be a big success.

Brain:
we reached the mass market which is
bigger than ever thought.
But this kind of gamer does not see themselves as
gamers.
Farmville is a kind of social
interactivity.

Brenda:
Harvesting is a popular mechanic in german
boardgames.
Discussion about games moved from violent games to would please
squeeze my pet.

Noah:
Farmville the most aggressive move you can make
is harvest a little faster.
This does not threading the social player. We
have to give up the hardcore game mechanic to reach the mass
market.

Brenda made that point clear.

Brian. Game mechanics is
not longer king. We have to build the social interactivity
first.

Noah:
The only survive in the game industry if you like the
change. So you've love
to learn over and over again. He has recalibrate his
game design skills

Steve:
New challenges make game development
exciting.

Brenda:
game design become a game for game
designers.
Metrics made it a game.

Noah:
... are we in
trouble?
Steve:
we got 100 Million people playing a game for 5 minutes a
day.
Noah: so the next big thing is to make them play the whole
day.
...
Brian: Does this number is still growing?
...
it's a huge
relief to game designer that a facebook game still does not depend on
hardware.
Games will be more complicated in the future.

Brenda:
We
again keep the level of complexity on growing.

Steve:
I completely
disagree. It the simplicity that makes the game so accessibility.
I don't
want to see us to make the same mistake.
Keep this kind of games close to the
bottom.

Brain agrees.

Brenda: You guys are underestimating.
()

Brain: One of the big challenges in social games is not to fire and
forget.
You've to put more constantly new content inside. Games start small
and grow up complexity.

Noah:
If you clone, you may now profit from
this. Less risk because you've two three months to do a game.

We can do
things like Bejeweled Blitz which is a copy and again different.
We can
iterate and innovate.

Steve:
500000 apps are made on facebook. It
seems somebody thought of everything we can make. We still keep on
innovating.

Brain: Add inherit new parts, but keep the whole game simple.
he thought:If you want to go deeper you can deeper ends mostly with to much
complexity.
Farmville is made in 4-5 weeks.
Noah said a fb game is easily
made at low cost in short time. How much does it cost to keep it running? Steve:
5 times more, does not depend on if it is a success.