Much of what modern digital rights management (DRM) systems attempt to accomplish was actually forcefully implemented on videogame consoles beginning with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and SEGA Genesis system in the early 1980s. Examining the links between modern DRM mechanisms and these early production and copy protection systems can help contextualize the future of media production and access.

Jason’s talk, as he says in his post, focused on 10 things that don’t suck:

For my keynote, I gave an updated version of my “10 things that don’t suck” presentation. Also, did a more niche panel on economic development type stuff, and a separate lecture on failure as the path to success/innovation.

The list I walked away with was as follows:

1. New Interfaces
2. New Players and Broadening Demographics
3. Usability Metrics and Metrics in General
4. Closer Ties to Academia and Growth of Game Studies
5. Production Sophistication with Agile Development and Scrum
6. Progress in QoL
7. Tools and “Democratization”
8. Managing Risk with Real-Time Management and Release Early/Often Models
9. Shifting Innovation “S” Curves
10. Impact – Games for Change and Serious Games

Now, of course I have to convince Jason that though my PhD says “Science and Technology Studies,” I am one of those Dr. people who “do games.” It may not say game studies, but I wrote my dissertation about work and creative practice in the game industry. Of course I don’t have any snazzy photos of me and Warren Spector, so that may ultimately be my problem. But maybe that makes sense, instead you’ll find pictures of me like this one, hanging out with developers rather than the folks at the top:

GDC 2007 Photo Jog

All-in-all, the event was a delight, save one presentation that simply rubbed me the wrong way. Typically I’m not one to get up and leave a presentation, but I was frustrated enough ten minutes into the talk that I decided having my blood pressure elevated for another 50 minutes was simply not something I was interested in. Upon returning to my notes I realized that what ticked me off was a definition of “risk” that doesn’t include human time/labor as having value (“The square root of bugger-all” to be precise). Tell that to MMOs attempting to battle World of Warcraft for the time of users. Sorry. No cookie.

There was a significant call for “internship” opportunities by students present at the end of the weekend town hall meeting. I’m actually not sure that the different definitions of “internship” are the same for what students are asking for and what industry is hearing. What many of the students seem to be asking for are unpaid internships for credit to gain experience. What industry typically has are paid internships for in-school or just-out-of-school folks hoping to demonstrate and hone skills prior to entering the workforce. There is also a significant difference in these two definitions in terms of time over head (there it is again, time, sheesh!) on the part of the internship offering company as well as expected output from the intern. What may very well be the “answer” for this is to create a kind of incubation/training system where students can work with other independent developers for free/credit, rather than asking/hoping the local industry do something time demanding and different than what they have become used to. Several times I heard students say when asked about a reel or portfolio, that they simply “don’t have time.” Make time. I did. Party less. Get lower grades. Do something different, because I don’t accept that answer. I see what you do on the weekends and weeknights. I have visited the bars and I know your WoW avatar names.

Perhaps the coolest part (besides the parties, which in GDC style were “off the hook”) was that The University of Georgia was graciously provided a space at the job and education hall for having rounded up so many attendees. Having never done this before, and not really asked permission, things were a bit sparse, but I feel we did well with a budget of $0.00 and the impressive efforts of folks like Josh Marsh who posted our running trailer, available for your viewing pleasure here:

UGA SIEGECon Promo video from krash nburn on Vimeo.

“Most graduates go off to California or Seattle or wherever the industry is thriving. A lot of them would happily stay here if there was more of an industry to graduate into,” says Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost, researcher, critic, designer and author of the recently published Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System. “We’re not going to be viewed as a serious player in the industry until we see some successful products released, with critical acclaim and all that stuff.”
…
“Georgia doesn’t need to create an industry. It needs to create a unique industry,” he says. “We should be looking at what a regional games industry would look like. Every state is looking for ways to capitalize on this new form of entertainment, but the opportunity we haven’t cashed in on is the specific voice of Atlanta or Georgia or the Southeast.

Ultimately, this is the thing right? How do we make something that represents GA? In my case, how can we make something that represents UGA, Athens, etc? All of this ultimately goes to what Jason Della Rocca was talking about when he talked about clusters. OK, now for the ego quote:

Casey O’Donnell, assistant professor at the University of Georgia’s Grady College, has first-hand experience with that setup. He was with Vicarious Visions, a successful game studio in upstate New York, when it was acquired by industry mega-corporation Activision.

“Vicarious Visions went from 75 employees to 150 in the time I was there,” says O’Donnell, who came to UGA last August to build a program that will include video games as a major focus. “But that one studio has now been responsible for parenting four or five other studios as talented people left to start their own companies, all of them making money.

“That’s what we need to foster, a community of small, independent studios. To me, more people making a living, as opposed to a few multi-billionaires dominating the industry, is the desirable scenario.”

More to come I suppose.

In part this was due to watching several people at conferences in my relatively recent past talk about precisely what I had written, as if it hadn’t ever been mentioned before. I have actually written about it twice now, once in Flow TV and once in my dissertation, but if my words fall in the forest and no one is listening, apparently it doesn’t really make a sound or matter.

So, with that in mind, I’ve decided that given the significant amount of data that I have already gathered on this particular topic that I need to update and think a bit more about. Not to mention that I’ve seen a handful of recent articles about how Sony is “opening” up PS2 development. At this point I remain largely unconvinced. That isn’t to say that a lot has changed in the last couple of years. However, most of the “open” consoles require either the same old licencing/NDA crap (Wii-Ware) or they largely lock you into proprietary languages and tool-chains (XNA Express on the Xbox 360 or the iPhone). I am continually bothered by the “same old stuff” being talked about as open or different, because it certainly isn’t. I cannot go to a Sony web page and download an SDK for the PS2. I don’t blame Sony for this, but I don’t expect to be downright lied to.

Then there is probably the most insidious, which I have to wonder if it will ultimately rear its head in the upcoming Global Game Jam, is the use of proprietary NDA covered technologies that ultimately prevent education and industry wide learning and advancement. Sony has “opened” the PSP or PS2 in such a fashion here in the US, but those agreements specifically go against any sort of pedagogical ideal that learning is connected with sharing and collaboration.

Still mulling, but pulling things together.

The first series of tabs are perhaps critically linked to the second post I’ll be making, but fundamentally about different issues. In my dissertation, especially in the “MOD(ify)-ing Game Development Worlds” sections I talked about some of the critical issues facing the videogame industry. I also talk specifically about how those practices which are hurting the videogame industry are actually many of the practices which are being imported into other “industries,” but most directly in other New Media industries. Those two particular chapters are titled:

• “Game Development Practice: A Postmortem”
• “The Game Industry Galaxy: A Postmortem”

Though I tease the Phil Harrison of 2007s Game Developers Conference and his “Game 3.0″ slide from the Sony keynote, recent news reports have me wondering if he was really commited to the concept and his job at Atari has created an opportunity for him to pursue Game 3.0. The other possibility is that his experiences at Atari thus far have convinced him that Game 3.0 as the industry is currently structured will never be the lively world of Web 2.0 they wish it to be.

It was that question that got me to thinking about how perspective within the videogame industry has likely shifted how Phil Harrison thinks about what is good for the industry. Recently he’s begun talking like me, which honestly is either a good sign or a really bad one for his career. Considering some of the nonconstructive criticism I’ve received from industry side people, I have to wonder if it was his transition to Atari that made him realize this, or if his departure from Sony had more to do with that.

At the same time, the nonconstructive words I have gotten are often not from “rank and file” developers. They tend to be people who deal regularly with industry executives and manufacturing companies. This is precisely the position that Phil Harrison is in, so I wonder greatly what has influenced this change in thinking and if suddenly it will become all the rage throughout the videogame industry? Or will this movement go just like the movement for improved QoL? What no one has really put together, or at least vocalized yet, is that the two are critically linked.

GamesIndustry.biz – Phil Harrison: It’s Time for a Change in Games Development

Atari president Phil Harrison has revealed his belief that the process of game development needs to change, in order to make it a less risky experience overall, and one that will help to promote innovative and creative ideas.
…
“That’s pretty much the definition of why projects fail – because you don’t know what you’re building, you don’t know how you’re going to build it, you don’t know who you’re building it for, but you’ve got 60 people working on it and they’ve all running in different directions – that’s how most games fail.

Gamasutra – Atari’s Harrison: Democratizing Development is an Industry Must

Harrison compared the low-cost game creation movement to the Net Yaroze development platform for the original PlayStation, which resulted in a number of “fantastic games”, per Harrison, being developed by international teams during the 1990s.

He clearly thinks that bringing amateur and indie developers into the fold with tools such as Unity addresses a real need within the games industry at large. “The comments that I was making [during my keynote] were primarily from an industry perspective.”

“Managing the funnel of recruitment, training, educating, and getting the skills shortage, skills gap closed, is kind of an industry-wide problem… ”

Harrison concluded: “I was primarily making that comment from an industry perspective, but from an Atari perspective… I think we would want to work with creators of all types, and that’s why I’m so interested in Unity, because it does democratize development.”

Gamasutra – Atari Boss Harrison at Unite 08: ‘Fail Early’

Harrison’s keynote, in which he noted that he ‘wanted to be here’ due to his enthusiasm for the tool, rather than any commercial/strategy interest, evangelized Unity as a tool that could potentially change the game industry, referring to the first time that he saw Unity running in his web browser as “a transformational moment.”

Atari lite-C

The first plenary session opened a bit slow, but I’ve decided that it had more to do with the frigid temperatures in the pavilion, rather than any particular fault of the speakers. Rich Taylor of the ESA, Asante Bradford (who also doubled as MC for the panel) of the GA Department of Economic Development, and Blake Lewin of Turner R&D brought together a panel that at first seemed a bit disjointed, but ultimately came together quite nicely.

I think ultimately it was Blake Lewin who hit the nail on the head. Though I’m not quoting him, he seemed to identify how particularly important the balance between the rights of users and developers/publishers is going to be to the future of the videogame industry. At several points the recording industry’s lack of capability to work within and around these changes brought laughs from the crowd. But really, it is just as important for the videogame industry, perhaps even more important.

I have to wonder that if the game industry does not tackle these big issues, DRM, Region Lockout, Format Wars, System Lock-in, and the list goes on, they’re not going to be able to meet the call that many are making, that games will characterize media for the next century just as radio and television characterized media in the previous century. It’s not a problem that is going to get solved here in Atlanta this weekend, but it’s going to be felt most acutely in places like this, where burgeoning industries are attempting to evolve.