Game Developers Conference Europe in Cologne
Chronicle by Jussi Autio
Two weeks ago many of the game companies in Film Arc participated in Game Developer’s Conference in Cologne. It was a good place to meet colleagues and publishers and learn the latest things that are going on in various fields. 3 days of lectures, panels and presentations. For my part it was excellent to hear so many presentations complaining about the same things I’ve been complaining about for years – that games really should grow up and mature and the industry should relate itself more to art than toys. And particularly for independent developers the key thing is to create something of their own which significantly sets them apart from everyone else.
Nordic countries were very visible in the conference as Matias Myllyrinne from Remedy held one of the keynotes. Although we have other game companies that have managed to achieve global success, Max Payne is still the biggest success for the Finnish game industry. Thus the publificiation of their new game Alan Wake in spring 2010 will most likely be the biggest thing Finnish game industry have had in years. In his keynote Matias urged others do find their own way of doing things, having stronger charachters and looking at other culture forms for inspiration.
Probably the biggest thing that happened in the GDCE was Iceland’s leading game studio’s CCP’s announcement of their new MMO (massively multiplayer online) game for game consoles. The new Dust game will link directly into their previous MMO’s world and thus makes the EVE Online experience also greater. Having developed this in secret for 3 years, it promises good times for Iceland’s economy as already EVE Online alone with its 300 000 paying customers contributed 40% of Iceland’s export rate in 2007, according to CCP. I could imagine this percentage may be a lot higher now the the whole economy in Iceland is experiencing great difficulties.
Still the most applauded presentation came from David Cage who gave a tought-provoking presentation on the future of game industry and, as I already mentioned, whether we are making toys or art. If there are only 4 things you can do in an average game (run, jump, shoot and crouch) then it is very limited world no matter how freely you can wander in the game world.
And at the same time with just those 4 things that you can do, it’s almost impossible to appeal to any emotion other than primitive survival emotions.
And clearly being a conference for game makers, his presentation was interrupted by spontaneous hoorays and applauses when he said that one should never allow marketing people have a creative input.
From my part another very interesting observation was that iPhone really is hot out there. It was covered widely and most seemed to agree that it is the only mobile phone one should make games for. The fact that all publishers said they have their own departments to publish iPhone games which is separate from their mobile phone divisions really shows that they are aware that there are more iPhones out there than Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 consoles. And likewise it is a platform for gamers as it outperforms all the handheld game consoles technologically. In the whole conference Nokia was not mentioned at all and this clearly shows that Nokia has a mountain to climb if they want to get the most creative people to work on their phones to create the best games possible. And without Nokia having the best games, then their phones will remain “just” phones.
There was also a consumer fair Gamescom that started after GDCE, but my plane was scheduled to leave already on Thursday so I only got a glimpse of that. Being active also in the board game business I felt a huge difference in atmosphere, compared to board game fairs. I don’t know if this changed during the other Fair days, but it was depressing to see so few women out there, particularly when the Spiel Fair, for example, is equally attracting both men and women. Also the way exhibitors present their new games seemed different. In Gamescom everything was more secretive and thus maybe even a bit cold when compared to Spiel Fair. Huge walls behind which only special people could get into to get the first feel of what was coming and thus feel more ‘special’ and privileged and thus hopefully more likely to write positive reviews. For a humanist these sorts of things really catch the eye.
All in all Game Developers Conference was very interesting and I look forward to going there again.