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MMO Past Present & Future summaries

March 9th, 2007 (Visited 4123 times) Tags:

This panel seems to have resonated. Write-ups:

Also a must-read: Joi Ito’s take on the conference as a whole, which I completely agree with.

I have still not made it to a single session. I hope to wake up in time for tomorrow’s Game Studies download.

Oh, and my talks today went well. I’ll post slides when I am more conscious.

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13 Responses to “MMO Past Present & Future summaries”

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Planet Noori wrote on March 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm:

MMO Past Present & Future summaries

Nepolot - Ahora sin colesterol wrote on March 11th, 2007 at 3:30 am:

Shugeru Miyamoto y Will Wright siguen siendo unos genios; San Francisco fue la sede en lugar de San Jose; Raph Koster sigue diciendo al mundo que hay mucho más MMO que World of Warcraft, y el mundo escuchó (¡y opinó al respecto!). Mientrás que Damion opina que ha sido la mejor GDC a la que ha asistido, Psychochild cree que la GDC en general apesta, y Raph Koster tiene una opinión más ecuánime.

Sirlin.net — Your source of shocking insights on game design wrote on March 9th, 2007 at 8:59 am:

Recently Commented GDC 2007, Day 1 Raph’s Website » MMO Past Present & Future summaries: 03/09/2007 03:39 pm 8 comments Time and Skill from Scientific American Kicks: 03/09/2007 09:58 am 23 comments Playing to Win, Part 1 Classic example: 03/09/2007 12:23 am 13075 comments My Patent Article on Gamasutra

reBang weblog wrote on March 9th, 2007 at 5:00 pm:

s-era graphics, can still be so popular? still be played at competitive events? The answer seems obvious. In any event, I translate Ito’s words to something I’ve been going on about lately: it’s not the Thing, it’s the Experience. via Raph Koster’s blog Posted in meatspace, cyberspace | No Comments » March 8th, 2007

Raph Koster < Blog < Biowiki wrote on March 9th, 2007 at 5:11 pm:

[...] went up and introduced myself after his panel on MMORPGs. I fessed up that I was actually an academic scientist, nothing to do with the game industry. He [...]

Game Developers Conference 07 wrote on December 14th, 2008 at 12:55 pm:

[...] La Game Developers Conference (GDC) de este año ya vino y se fue. Muchas cosas interesantes, y otras no tanto, fueron expuestas en esta conferencia; Shugeru Miyamoto y Will Wright siguen siendo unos genios; San Francisco fue la sede en lugar de San Jose; Raph Koster sigue diciendo al mundo que hay mucho más MMO que World of Warcraft, y el mundo escuchó (¡y opinó al respecto!). [...]

Reader Comments

Cuppycake said on March 9th, 2007 at 1:32 am:
Thanks for the link! Enjoyed what you had to say, as usual. =)
Cyndre said on March 9th, 2007 at 6:11 am:
Raph, the session is always the best for us in the fringe of the industry. The ranters and players get a really good opportuntiy to see what resonates with the top designers and corporate bigwigs within the industry. I think this years was no different. You guys made a lot of really insightful observations about the shift from general gaming industry fringe into the main stream. I tend to disagree with Rob and sort of expect, as you see to, that the big money will be pouring in from what you described as ‘big media.’ It’s only natural that ya’ll create something profitable and that has attracting millions of users across the diverse virtual worlds, and they want a share of the pie. It also makes sense that if they throw enough money at the industry, eventually they will get it right, and they’ll have a top title coming out of big media. That or they’ll just buy up a few like SOE has done, and inherit the design talent.
Morgan Ramsay said on March 9th, 2007 at 1:27 pm:
People go where there’s money. It’s a simple fact of life, a principle of business. Throughout the history of human affairs, you can actually find all the data you would ever need to prove that statement. People go where there’s money.

I don’t think Rob Pardo was disputing the fact that there is a lot of money available from traditional media conglomerates for their own online productions, but I also don’t think he completely understood what Raph said. Pardo said that the “interesting” and “important” productions will come from big-name, high-profile developers. This orientation is akin to how film fanatics view mainstream movies versus high-brow cinema. There’s a lot of crap on television and in the theaters, but the jewels of cinema are made by indies and showcased at various festivals such as Sundance.

Given that Blizzard concentrated on production quality with World of Warcraft, this attitude from Rob should come of no surprise. In some respects, there is truth to this view. Star Trek was once a little rinky-dink property with a terrible set that was filmed back-to-back with the original Mission: Impossible. Today, Star Trek is huge, legendary, and has influenced generations of science fiction writers and filmmakers.

But people go where there’s money. Eventually, business and culture will shift to big-media productions in the gamespace, and the “interesting” and “important” productions will retain their collective niche status.
Ian Holmes said on March 9th, 2007 at 2:53 pm:
Hi Raph — I liked your summary of the session. I came up and introduced myself to you after the panel. You might remember — when I told you I was a bioengineer you grimaced and did a mock collapse. So, actually, this goaded me into writing a short defense of bioengineering here:

http://biowiki.org/view/Blog/RaphKoster

A bit off-topic, sorry about that. Anyway I’ve enjoyed your output here & at the conference. Great stuff.
Ian Holmes said on March 9th, 2007 at 9:00 pm:
Oops — OK having read your response on my site I now realize I was COMPLETELY off the mark in thinking you had some objection to bioeng… when in fact it was a profession in SWG… now I feel suitably humbled… please accept my apology!
Allen Sligar said on March 10th, 2007 at 3:04 am:
It was a very inspiring talk.
brent said on March 10th, 2007 at 9:15 am:
Raph,

Did a point by point summary of this panel as part of the daily GDC podcasts, perhaps I caught something the others did not, who knows:

http://www.virginworlds.com/pg.php?n=5849

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