GDC

GDC

I just got back from a week at the Game Developers Conference. I was fortunate enough to have my company send me which I believe is quite a privilege. I had not been since my Big Grub days in 1996 and this year it was in San Francisco which is a city I had also not been to for about 8 years so it was quite natsukashi (nostalgic).

The show runs for 5 days. The first 2 days are "tutorials" and arguably not part of the "main" conference. The last 3 days everything is going and the show is fully attended. There really were not a whole lot of super moments directly from the show for me. The best part of course is always meeting new people and catching up with old friends. This year they really pushed for Eastern attendance and Tuesday night they had an "East Meet's West" reception to try to foster some new relationships between eastern (mostly Japanese, Chinese, Korean) and western developers.

For my Japanese friends, although they although they all enjoyed their trip they were pretty disappointed to find out how poor their English really was meaning that most of them could not follow along with the lectures. The conference did have some lectures translated live using wireless headphones which was pretty amazing but I guess it's fairly expensive so they were not able to have it for more than a few.

Disaster

One really really sad thing that happened, the very first day 4 Japanese attendees were mugged walking to the show from their hotel. One of them is someone I know. He was taken to a hospital and was back in Japan the next day. As an American I'm really embarrassed and upset that my country sucks so much. Lots of typical American attitudes were that it was their own fault, they were in a hotel in a bad part of town. But, you have to realize, violent crime is almost non-existent in Japan compared to the USA and the Japanese have absolutely no context for it. Here in Tokyo you can pretty much walk anywhere anytime of the day and not give it a second thought. On top of which there is no way you could expect them to know what's a good part of town and what's not.

Since America is not going to get less violent anytime soon my suggestion is that the show, at least for the foreigners, should provide a crime map marking relatively safe/dangerous areas. I suspect given America's sue happy environment they couldn't do that because it would introduce some responsibility on the conference. Maybe they could put the correct disclaimers or something.

Another more minor issue was one of my friends got booked in a hotel near the Airport which is like 30 minutes by car or a $40 cab rid from the show. The conference organizers did provide a list and a map of local hotels so that issue can only be blamed on whoever did the arrangements for my friend.

Spore

As for the show it sounds like the #1 highlight for many was the Will Wright talk showing his new game Spore. I say "sounds like" because the talk was over attended and several hundred people that wanted to see it were turned away including myself. The conference organizers struggled to try to get some monitors setup to let us listen and watch from a distance but unfortunately they had not planned for it and they didn't get it working in any useful way.

I was particularly interested because apparently he showed of algorithmically generated creatures which is something I had proposed a game over a year ago using many of the same techniques.

Heart of a Gamer

There was most inspirational talk was Mr. Iwata's, president of Nintendo, talking about the "Heart of a Gamer". Mr. Iwata is one of the creators of the original Kirby series and others and he talked basically about how he is one of "us", a gamer. As a teen he programmed games on his HP calculator. As a college student he moved to a shared apartment in the Akihabara district so be near the computer shops in the late 70s and hacked away making games. Eventually he help start HAL, the company that did Kirby and others. He said HAL was named after HAL from 2001.

He also talked about crunchtime and all nighters. Seeing the beauty of Mt Fuji in the morning not because he got up to see it but because he was still up from the night before. Clearly he actually is a gamer unlike the presidents of most other hardware companies and game publishers. Of course that doesn't mean Nintendo will do well but still it was nice to see "one of US" leading such a big company instead of the typical "suit".

Soul of a Bundle

I attended a talk about Katamari Damacy by its designer, Keita Takahashi. I'm not sure I really got anything out of it. He said development was 3 years!!! Of course most of that was with just a couple of people and I guess much of it was about the politics of getting it published but really, it was hard to come away with anything useful from the talk except that it's nearly impossible to get an unusual game published.

He did comment that he was happy to have a made a non-violent game. While I agree it's feels non-violent you do roll over screaming people and destroy neighborhoods so ??!?!?!?

Breakables

There was a talk by Prof. James O'Brien about simulating breakable stuff, something very few games have done so far. Most of us just cheat by making 2 models, one in good condition and one broken and when the object breaks he through up some debris effects and switch to the broken model. Prof. O'Brien though had the breaking simulated in real time and it was Amazing. Even more amazing using the same math he was able to synthesize sounds in realtime so for example dropping a bowl made of wood the bowl would bounce and roll and generate the exact correct sounds for exactly how it bounced, rolled, skidded etc. Change the parameters do a metal bowl and it would bounce, roll and skid with metal bowl sounds. It was really amazing.

Bribes

I'm not sure what the point was but Microsoft and Samsung gave away 1000 23" LCD HD TVs after Jay Allard's keynote speech. He claimed HD was the next big thing and although he tried to define HD as including everything from networking to customization to HDTV he really seemed to come back to that people watching HDTV TV shows were not going to be happy with non HDTV games. That's probably true but hardly interesting.

Indies

The indy games were amazing. Of course most of them have been available for a while on the net but I'm still amazed at how polished many of them are and how much work has been put into them. For example Steer Madness is a GTA3 style of game except you play a cow out to promote animal rights. The game was pretty much entirely created by one guy! Amazing!

There were also presentations by various students including an RPG with voice recognition that was an attempt to teach you Japanese. You had to speak in Japanese to use various objects like saying "Open Door" or "Shut Window". It had a long way to go but I can clearly see that idea as someday really working once if the tech every really gets there.

Personal Takaway

I gotta say, the #1 idea or thought I left with was my frustration at working in a Japanese company without perfect Japanese and without much influence. There were ideas all around for getting games done quicker, having a better quality of life, working more efficiently, as well as inspiration for new ideas to follow but as one guy on a small team in a situation were I can't effectively participate I left feeling helpless to use any of the ideas I was exposed to.

There were as well ideas and "writing on the wall" of things my company NEEDS to do to compete and yet from my position there's nothing I can do about it except to pray someone far above me "gets it" and makes things happen.

That was probably the biggest issue and made me feel fairly disconnected from the entire show.

Comments:

Crime in SF [ e ]

Yeah, unfortunately a lot of the tourist hotels in SF are right next to the Tenderloin, a notoriously bad part of town. I've heard that Japanese tour guides do provide maps of safe and dangerous areas. As for hotels near the airport, that could work if the hotel had a shuttle to the airport since you could then take BART (densha) to downtown SF. Anyway, I hope you were able to get outside once in a while and enjoy the unusually warm temperatures we had last week.

posted by albertSFBayAreaMarch 14, 2005 at 10:45

[ e ]

hisashiburi? Don't you mean "natsukashii"?

posted by VorteksMarch 14, 2005 at 13:00

Mugger idiots ... [ e ]

Hey Gregg,
I'm sure you already know this, but these idiots (thieves, muggers, etc) are usually informed ahead of time that potential victims are coming in to town simply by all the "advertising" that conferences like GDC and E3 splash all over town and near the convention centers (which are oddly always located near some not-so-safe places). It's really unfortunate that your collegue experienced that aspect of America ... as it's typically not as dangerous as it seems ... unless of course, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Typically what I suggest to my friends are:
1.) Leave the conference/convention center *early* before it gets dark.
2.) If it's nighttime, NEVER WALK anywhere; always take a taxi.
3.) Don't look like a tourist (walking around with a backpack and a carrying a map around); that's definately inviting trouble.
4.) If you are lost and need directions, it's safer/wiser to either go back the way you came or seek a law enforcement agent.

I was going suggest going into like a restaurant like McDonald's or something very public, but the way the city planning around those conference areas are set up, there's typically no obviously safe place to walk into to ask question if one get's lost. Of course, if you're Japanese and your English isn't up to par, that won't help.

If you get to go with your collegues again, try to see if your company is open to renting a car ... though that could be a bit of a hassle if you have to end up chauffeuring people around.

posted by globulousMarch 14, 2005 at 21:27

Rats! I didn't catch you. [ e ]

It's amazing how you can convince yourself that you don't see people who are actually there. I was also at the conference and at one point I thought I might have saw you there, but then quickly dismissed that cause I thought you wouldn't make it cause you were in Japan. Doh!

Anyways, I wasn't as lucky to get a "decent" pass but I agree with you for the most part about the conference and SF. With the Expo pass I only got into intro lectures and presenters tended to be really general and consistently referred the audience to their "white papers" for more information. The one hour schedule for the lectures tended to make them rushed to get through their information. I swapped for a classic pass with a friend to attend that Will Wright talk, but also managed to be just on time and have to wait outside for the unsuccessful setup.

As for SF, for the most part good food and nice people. It was my first time to California though and I wasn't really too used to the badgering by the homeless. It is disappointing to hear that your friends were mugged. Now I don't feel so bad being paranoid and checking over my shoulder so much.

Anyways, my first post so I'll say "great site and glad you're as open as you are about your life and career so us rookies can get an idea of what to expect." Thanks.

posted by jonasMarch 15, 2005 at 2:43

GDC [ e ]

I was there too. I was also an interpreter at the East Meets West party (Tuesday night, I think). Were you there?

I hadn't heard about the four Japanese people who got mugged. Some of my friends said that two people got shot outside their hotel. I was also amazed at all the homeless people begging around the place. I couldn't get from the Moscone centre to my hotel (also near the Tenderloin) without t least five vagrants bugging me for spare change.

I talked to a couple of them in the end to find out what was up with them. I asked one of them why he didn't get a real job. He told me it was because rent was too expensive and mostly only white people could get jobs. I wasn't convinced (since some of the beggers were white and there were lots of black people working), but accomodation in San Francisco certainly seems to be an issue. I was told you need at least $1 million for a nice house there. Also it's not so cold, so I guess California is comfortable for those people.

Anyway, apart from the beggars and the emergency services going off every ten minutes, I liked San Francisco. Especially the food. I like Japanese food, but it was good to have large helpings of meat and potatoes again.

I was there on a tutorials pass, as I'm interested in getting into making software for language education. Like Carnigie Mellon, I have been toying with speech recognition. I was kind of disappointed to see they were already doing something similar to what I was planing (and had thought was completely original). I also made sure I went to as many parties as possible and met lots of people.

If you are interested in getting out of your professional rut in Japan, Greggman, try the US military. They are throwing around hundreds of millions of dollars for game development right now. I know a guy who is a millionaire at 25 from making flight sims for the airforce, and I met other men like him at the conference. There is about a 10% success rate that your application will get through, and everyone I talked to who was doing it had been in the armed forces themselves. In your case, you already have a long career in game development, and maybe if you hooked up with an ex-military computer programmer, you could be in. There is also smaller funding called "offsets" available if you can't get the big dollars. Anything will do, flight sims, FPS, RTS, just so long as you can think up a military purpose for it, and they'll probably throw a million at you just for consultants. It was funny, one proposal they showed had a $12 million dollar budget to make a game consisting of a FPS and RTS and they were going to base them on Torque. I took a lot of notes, so if you are interested to know more, let me know. Do it while Bush is in power in case the government ever decides to chanel the money into social programs or something silly like like.

For me the highlight was meeting people. I met some of the industry giants as well as people I have been talking to on the internet for a couple of years, the makers of the engine I used in my last project, people useful to my future porjects, and just some really fun people.

All the parties, events, free food, drink and swag were nice, too.

posted by anonamanMarch 21, 2005 at 21:57

[ e ]

my company sent me to siggraph 2000 in New Orleans. The downtown area near the convention center had these big fish sculptures all over the place, but the Sony PS2 party was held in a warehouse in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood.

I happened to be riding the chartered bus next to some Sony PS2 execs, they commented (in Japanese) how sketchy the neighborhood was, and I made the joke (in Japanese) that the fish were maybe 'anzen-jurushi'. They laughed and were very surprised that a random gaijin guy on the bus could speak Japanese...

posted by anonymousTroyMarch 22, 2005 at 18:22

More Info [ e ]

I got the more complete story from my friends that were mugged.

There were 4 of them. They were on Market Street between 5th and 6th street going back to their hotel from dinner at around 8:50pm Sunday the 6th the day before the GDC. A group of men attacked them and stole their wallets and money. One got a fractured skull and another got some teeth broken. The one with the fractured skull said the doctor said it would be a couple of months before his fracture was 100% healed.

I know there are dangerous places in America but even having grown up on Orange County California and having lived in LA for several years I've never personally experienced any violence nor have any of my friends so it has never quite hit home like this incident. It might even feel worse since if it was an American friend they'd most likely write it off as bad luck, sad that we can think of it so casually, but these Japanese friends will always and forever just believe America is a despicable, dangerous and bad place

posted by greggmanMarch 30, 2005 at 4:56