AGC Day 1: Panels
More from the Austin Game Conference, September 9:
“The Right Content Mix”: Starr Long (NCSoft), Jason Durall (WolfPack), John Hanna (SOE), Jack Emmert (Cryptic), Rich Vogel (SOE)
Vogel opened by outlining five types of content: static, dynamic, player-generated, systemic, emergent. The “static/dynamic” distinction wasn’t between textual and procedural content, as far as I could tell — rather, a dynamic content component is a static content component that changes at runtime based on a random variable or user-specific data. Systemic content as he described it encompassed high-level rule structures (advancement algorithms, combat rules).
Average hours of gameplay content at launch was a recurring concern. The panel went back and forth a bit on the ideal number of hours of missions scripted at launch.
Emmert posited that certain techniques of content production and conception were “ossified” and entreated the audience to consider new paradigms. He cited the avatar creation system in CoH as an avenue to replayability — after you get bored with CoH as one character, you can advance through it again as another. New mechanics were cited as a next step in content production, but it was also noted that WoW has gone another direction, loading the system with an unprecedented amount of mission content.
Dynamic content was discussed as a way of achieving one of my favorite content concepts, “repetition with variation.” Less encouraging was the almost-singular focus on randomizers as ways of generating dynamic content.
Emmert echoed the morning’s keynote and discussed the possibilities of widespread online gaming, with Madden MMP as a speculative new model.
Some passing mentions of emergent gameplay and AI, then a discussion of user-generated content. Hanna (I think) largely dismissed user-generated content, saying most of it is substandard. Long then quite logically suggested distributed peer evaluation systems as a means of organizing content by quality.
Mission lengths should be variable, the panel agreed. Emmert emphasized the importance of players’ knowing the time impact of the choices they make in-game.
Vogel insisted a game must have grind. Later, when asked why, he said that achievement is a key pleasure in play.
It was interesting to note that guilds didn’t come up until late in the panel, and then pretty much just in passing. Vogel said more than once that “people do not entertain other people very well.”
“Building IP That Lasts”: Richard Garriott (NCSoft)
“Designing Within a License”: Rich Vogel (SOE), Mark Jacobs (Mythic), Vijay Lakshman (Turbine), Chris McKibbin (Perpetual)
Garriott made several strong points about the importance of original IP here, points that were somewhat underscored by the cautionary tales of the following panel (on licenses.) He noted that, as much of the market is derivative, one needs to create new IP at the early stages of a market segment’s development, or open that segment with new IP.
Garriott then traced the evolution of Ultima as an intellectual property over its many versions. It was fun to think about, and to hear Garriott discuss, Ultima’s evolution as a property, from a more familiar fantasy RPG in its first iterations to a unique world with unique concerns from Ultima IV on. Ultima began with a traditional genre, established a property within it, then recombined it with new concerns and elements to generate something new.
Another thread involved the recurrence of mathematical motifs — three principles, eight virtues, Phi as a recurring theme in Tabula Rasa. A cool organizing structure for game design: human concepts understood as quantifiable principles.
After Ultima, Tabula Rasa: a new IP focused on innovation, deliberately alien to what the market has previously produced. Some of the innovations have worked: the ideographic language created for the game, and the recurrence of Phi as a design principle. Garriott highlighted some of the avatar designs as less effective, and used the talk as an opportunity to present new designs: more familiar space warrior avatars have replaced the previous avatars, which Garriott described as “kung fu monks from space” (I always thought they had more Moebius going on).
Like Ultima, Tabula Rasa has some points of negotiation between change and the familiar, but it was very exciting to see that impulse to innovate at play, and to get a glimpse of Garriott’s vision of games and virtual worlds as media for original, expressive design.
The following panel, “Designing Within a License,” varied considerably from Garriott’s presentation, less a counterpoint than a different animal altogether. The discussion tended more toward production than design, with the major focus being the maintenance of a productive relationship with one’s licensor. Mark Jacobs, the loyal opposition with a public domain property (Camelot), bemoaned the difficulties of managing a license, and the other panelists conceded many challenges, although both Vogel and Lakshman raised points about the market power of a recognizable property, and the focus achieved by having a license as a design constraint.
This panel was responsible for the strangest moment of the day: Lakshman’s claim that loyal players have for years waited for the opportunity to play Dungeons and Dragons online. Huh?