GDC Field Report - Wednesday

Game that might make me buy a PS3:  Little Big Planet.  OMG awesome.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/littlebigplanet/clips-littlebigplanet-242305.php
Thanks to squant for the link.

We all showed up a minute or two late, and the first ten minutes of this roundtable were an exercise in groggy.  One of the GDC volunteers asked if we minded if he sat in on the session – the more the merrier, right?  Then things got more interesting and transforming than I’ve ever had them get at GDC – including the year I won a tiny HDTV from Microsoft.

The maker of Super Columbine Massacre RPG Danny Ledonne was there, and he talked about why he’d made the game and what happened next – I won’t pretend to quote, and I will get some facts wrong, but here’s essentially what he said.

I was a high school student in Colorado during the time of the columbine shootings, and overnight the atmosphere went a from normal high school to “If you question in any way that Dylan and Eric were poisoned by video games to go to school and kill their innocent peers, now your name is on a list of kids who might bring a gun to school.”  There was never any real analysis or though put towards what happened – how these kids got this way, what might have made them view their peers and teachers as they must have to pull the trigger.  I needed to do something to deal with it for myself, so I started thinking and researching with the thought that I’d make a documentary.  At some point I decided that since the news outlet unquestioningly accepted that video games were to blame, a documentary style video game of Dylan and Eric’s last day from their point of view would be the way to make my point about the absurdity of the claim.

It languished unknown on the website for a while, and then it hit the mainstream media, and I was completely unprepared for the PR nightmare which was to follow.  I did my best and tried to explain my motivations as well as I could, and the media completely ignored me.

Then I got a call from the head of the Slamdance Festival – they wanted me to enter the game.  I told them that it was problematic, that I’d midi-ized nirvana tracks without a license, that there were deeply disturbing images included.  They said fine, that was fine.

My first indication that they might not be ready to deal with the reality of this game came when they called me and asked if I minded if they screened it in an adults only screening.  Of course this is adult material – or at least, if you’re old enough to pick up a gun and start shooting your peers, that’s when you’re old enough for this game.  A few days later they called and said the decision had already been made to pull the game, and they just wanted to let me know.  I asked them why, and over the course of the next two weeks, they game me these three reasons – never coherently.  1:  Legal Issues – would survivors of families of victims sue?  2:  Potential loss of Sponsorship – a red herring, because one of the sponsors of the event pulled sponsorship after the game was pulled in protest.  3:  Music clearance Issues – woe the Nirvana MIDI.

The only thing I ever worried about was hurting the survivors or the families of the victims.  I didn’t want to do that.

The GDC volunteer says “Most of the families were grateful that because of the RPG the subject came up again – it had been dropped so suddenly when another news story came along.”

And the moderator says “How do you know how the families felt?”

And the volunteer takes a deep breath and says “My name is _kicking myself that I didn’t catch his name_ and I am a Bullying Activist and a Columbine Survivor.”

Have you ever been in a room in which the temperature drops 20 degrees in about three seconds?  I have.

Here’s what I took away from that moment; I saw Danny Ledonne come abruptly face to face with the consequences of his creation, and I saw that one survivor at least (and I don’t know how many he really spoke for) understood and supported Danny’s reason for making the game.  As far as I’m concerned, being there for that moment was the highlight of my GDC, and it was my first session.  Both of the young men I’ve mentioned were extremely thoughtful, articulate people with a passion for the discussion about video games and culture.  I learned that Richard Costaldo (The kid in the wheelchair who confronts Walmart in Bowling for Columbine) wants to go into game design – and I’d not be surprised if he turned out to be the same.  Sitting there in that room I had to wonder if the event of Columbine was somehow the seed by which our medium will finally grow up.

The moderator pretty skillfully decompressed the room, and we went on to cover some other topics.  That discussion is rehashed for your pleasure here, in as much as I (or anyone in the room) was able to take coherent notes after the Columbine bombshell.

Cosmopolitan magazine and PG13 films depict more violence and graphic sex than any AO game – the rating systems are skewed, because people assume that interactivity makes the experience more visceral somehow.  Now why is that – what is it about interactivity that changes the experience so fundamentally?  We came to a non-unanimous conclusion that it’s not interactivity per se, it’s accessibility – parents know how to translate the experience of watching Governor Arnold mow down 47 bad guys, because they have had that experience.  Parents who don’t play video games are completely unprepared to understand what the experience of playing is like, and they are scared by their kids’ deep interest and the fact that every time they walk through the living room the kid is bloodily chopping at a high-res orc again.  In the face of this mystery (what’s in a video game?  Why does my kid like it?) an ESRB ratings system means nothing, because the non-gamer parent hasn’t a clue what kind of game content might qualify as T, or AO.

Athletic Performance:  Intelligent Believable Characters

I attended this particular session in hopes of getting a better understanding of ways to meld animation fidelity and player character controllability.  At first I was disappointed – they stated up front that “We are not dealing with the responsiveness issue here” and I almost left, thinking that it was going to be a tutorial on how to make your character move in a way to that looks totally convincing and makes the player put down the controller and walk away.

I am not sure I’m glad I stayed.  I came away depressed – EA sports is way ahead of the game.  How that monolith managed to cut the red tape enough to get this done, I haven’t a clue, but what they’ve got is a tool that blends procedural animation, mo-cap data, mo-cap clip interrupt-ability and intelligent blending.  This tool allows them to use one (smaller than current gen) set of mocap animations for any biped movement while blending in procedurally those signature elements which make the shared run the run of a famous basketball player.  They’ve got foot locking, center of gravity shifting, acceleration and deceleration, and analog directional changes.  The tool that I saw a live demo of looked to me like it was going to set the standard for visual animation fidelity and character controllability.

The proof was in the pudding to me – they hooked up the tool they were showing and the previous gen tool they used last time to the same input controller, and executed a series of moves and turns in place.  The new tool finished a full four seconds earlier, because it was able to take inputs in real time and transform the character to the correct animation without finishing the current mocap clip.

Women and Games in the Future

I don’t know why I torture myself with these – every year I go to the “women and games blah blah” talk and every year I am disappointed with the totally uninspired “we’re making progress! There are 15 more of us!  I had to stand in line in the bathroom today!”  It was really the same old, same old.  This year, however, I guess the excitement of the morning got me riled up – I’d hit my breaking point and for “question time” of the panel I got up and waved my arms around a lot and said “I’m really glad to see more women come by the booth when I’m working it, it’s great to see all these young women who want to be producers and programmers and scripters and environment artists – but where are the women who want to be designers?  What is wrong with you that you don’t want to determine the player experience?  Is it scary?  Can someone here tell me why increased numbers of women in this industry does not mean increased numbers of women in design?”  I’m sure it wasn’t as coherent as that, but it did stir things up a bit (though less than the guy after me who asked why we need to make games to include women at all.)
                                             
I think it’s time for some lively Post-Feminist women and games talks, yes I do.  More on that later, if I can keep my head of steam up.

Map Prototype Process:  Creating fun (Multiplayer) Gameplay Spaces While Minimizing Risk

This talk was a lot more relevant to multiplayer or mission based map building than single player action adventure, and it’s not terribly world-changing, but they didn’t claim it was.  It’s common sense for the Ghost Recon series, and listed in short below.

1.    Take map idea submissions from the whole team.  Reinforce this, so you get lots.

2.    Quick paper concept / top down maps help clarify exactly what you’re talking about and help you make big cuts early.

3.    Build a low res version of the map as fast as possibly while retaining basic texture repeat size and color.  Because this is ghost recon and foliage is really important to gameplay, put in your high res foliage in expected concentrations.

4.    Play the (multiplayer) map like crazy.  Get the whole team in on it.  Solicit feedback.  Ask what people liked.

5.    After the map has been certified “fun” and “doable” for the 3 most popular multiplayer modes, put it into art production.

6.    Profit.

That guy on the moped says “Thanks, [gribblet's company] for the first aid training you made her go to”

Walking away from the convention center after my late stint in the booth I heard an impact and turning around saw a guy leaping off his moped milliseconds before it crashed into the back of a Mercedes.  He hit the ground hard, and rolled down the street like a log maybe 4 or 5 times.  I managed to dial 911, tell them what happened and where we were, talk him into sitting down (He jumped right up before anyone could reach him and started moving the moped before the adrenaline wore off, and was more than a little shaky) I remembered to ask his name, tell him mine, and ask him if he had any pain.  I tried to keep him calm and at least kept him from standing up again and possibly making any injuries he’d had worse.  The fire department showed up and off I went after telling them what I knew and making sure he was cool with me leaving.

If I’d not had first aid training I don’t think I could have done any of that – I’d just have stood around like everyone else and hoped someone else knew what to do.  It’s funny how simple the required set of actions are, and how hard they are to perform under stress.