Hey, all. The world’s greatest developers of the world’s greatest game about the Federal Reserve/innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage, iBailout!!, are back from GDC (about a week ago, actually, but who’s keeping track?) and it was most definitely solid and we are feeling very much inspired–nay, cocksure, even. I was tweeting and blogging the entire conference @marronigames and posting the day’s impressions for Complex. Here’s the whole spicy enchillada in one handy place, along with some nice exclusive business just for you fine visitors of this here MEE site. Dig in and iBailout!!, people:
‘Twas the Night Before GDC
So, first night of GDC festivities are down and Square Enix’s FF XIII launch event was pretty tight.
The panel event on the impact on gaming of the FF series, featuring game industry legends Graeme Devine (7th Guest), Chris Taylor (Total Annhilation, Gas Powered Games), Mark Cerny (Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Ratchet and Clank), Feargus Urquhart (Fallout 2, Obsidian), Corrine Yu (Halo), and FF XIII Director,
Motomu Toriyama - FF XIII Director
Motomu Toriyama, was cool to see too. And, the appearances by Square Enix head Yoichi Wada and FF XIII voices Troy Baker and Ali Hillis (a.k.a. Mass Effect’s Liara Tsoni) sealed the deal—the XIII crystal champagne glass in the pink frilly giftbag was none too shabby neither.
Now, it’s off to GDC proper to see what 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel (World of Goo), has to say about breaking indie game devs free from the evils of not havin’ any cash, and his and a host of other key indies’ new and most tantalizing venture: Indie Fund. You know you love your iBailout!!, right, Ron?
That’s all for now, folks, and please follow @marronigames to get in on the action and hit me up with those always stimulating questions and comments.
Peace.
UPDATE: I made a little bit of an error in this post. It should read:
“Wrapping up at the Independent Games Festival and the Game Developers Choice Awards, Tiger Style’s iPhone masterpiece, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, took the top iPhone honors with Monaco, the four player espionage game, getting the best indie nod and Uncharted 2 taking pretty much everything else in the main awards categories. John Carmack of id Software…”
GDC Day #4
iBailout!! team Sound Designer & Musician, Anthony 'Fuzion' Drummond, conserving energy after the 2K party.
The days are starting to run together and supplies are going fast. They’ve been attacking regularly and they seem to be intelligent, almost learning somehow. The iBailout!! team is keepin’ it real in SF, though, and doing our best to conserve energy—we’re holed up, locked and loaded and ready to roll for whatever comes the way of the world’s best developers of the world’s bestest game about the Federal Reserve. Bring it on. It’s already been brought.
Sid's GDC Keynote
In other news, Sid Meier (Sid Meier’s Civilization, Sid Meier’s Pirates! and Sid Meier’s Everything I Do is Fucking Amazing and Will Swallow Your Life Away Into a Vast Pit of Absolute Awesomeness) delivered the keynote speech of the Game Developers Conference on ‘The Psychology of Game Design: Everything You Know is Wrong’ and proceeded to inspire the shit out of the entire games industry with his observations on, among many other very interesting things, why it’s wise to make your players feel like the shit (because it’s more fun when you win, of course) and why a perception of fairness is more important than actually being fair (again, because the player is king and what they think goes).
The indie games Nuovo (that’s indie for new) Sessions continued to keep it real with real nice presentations on black-and-white puzzler Closure, new-school Atari game A Slow Year, the, according to designer Cactus, “really simple game that looks weird,” Tuning, and the paint-the-walls-to-find-the-walls FPS, The Unfinished Swan, among others.
The day finished on a high note with some most delicious inside-out BLTs (as tasty and bacony as they sound) courtesy of 2K Games at their Civ V/Mafia II party (I hope you enjoyed your personal iBailout!! demo, Sid—we sure did).
Tomorrow holds the promise of a bright and early Shadow Complex talk and, as always, people, get down or lay down: @marronigames
Peace.
GDC Day #5
All’s well that ends well and this year’s GDC went pretty damn well.
I missed that Shadow Complex talk that I teased yesterday, but the ‘Comedy in Games’ panel with Lucasarts vet and current Double Fine grand poobah, Tim Schafer (The Secret of Monkey Island, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend), among others, helped make up for it a little bit. Schafer went into his influences a bit on how he and his team are constantly working on trying not to censor themselves and just let it flow (e.g., the more absurd, the more absurd (no worries about any three-headed monkeys)).
At the Independent Games Festival pavilion, Closure (IGF ‘10 Excellence in Audio Award winner) is only looking nicer and nicer with time and should be very cool when it finally hits the consoles. I actually checked these two out yesterday, but Enviro-Bear 2000 (just click the link and play it) was certainly entertaining and student showcase, old-school point-n-click, sci-fi noir adventure Boryokudan Rue is really looking and playing super sharp as well.
Wrapping up the conference, Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims, Spore) made a mostly surprise appearance (his session was scheduled pseudonymously as Phaedrus), delivering his thoughts on the ‘Metaphysics of Game Design’. It was a very broad talk that touched on many disciplines, but the main points that he was driving home were on how our rapidly developing technologies are shaping not only the future, but us ourselves, socially and physically and that there’s never been a more exciting than now for video games. He didn’t use the word transhumanism (see: Deus Ex 3: Human Revolution), but that’s exactly what he was getting at and, as far as I’m concerned, microchip, or otherwise, implants aren’t so cool and I won’t be lining up for one like I did the Wii—I’m with him on the state of gaming (it being supremely awesome and exciting right now unlike any time before, and all), though.
In flight, back to the D.
But, that is it, people. I hope you enjoyed the Complex/MEE GDC 2010 coverage as much as I did bringing it to you all. Please don’t forget to get your daily dose of the world’s greatest game about the Federal Reserve/innovative Ms. Pac-Man homage, iBailout!!, in and, of course, stay in touch: @marronigames
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