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GDC 07: Where Game Meets the Web

March 10th, 2007 (Visited 8225 times) Tags:

I have put up the slides (warning, tons of images!) and the original PPT file (51MB Zip) of my lecture at GDC this year. Those of you who are Web 2.0 geeks will likely find nothing much that is interesting here, honestly — but those of you who are straight up game geeks may find it enlightening.

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33 Responses to “GDC 07: Where Game Meets the Web”

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thcrawford wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

systems. Web 2.0 is changing all of that. How do we respond? Raph has some great insights into how to survive, adapt, and even thrive in the changing world. Here are the links: - Gamasutra (a leading gaming magazine) post about the talk - Raph’s post about the talk - The audio for the talk - The associated PowerPoint slides As a side note, take a look at his PowerPoint. I think there are quite a few slides that turn out to be great uses of PowerPoint. Of course, to balance those, he’s got several

Head of Inadvisably Applied Technomancy wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

listen to twice. Anyone interested in the whole “Web 2.0″ phenomenon of user-generated content (Koster even defines tagging and rating photos in flikr as user generated content, when enough of it is accreted) should listen to what Koster has to say. His slides are available in both web images and the original powerpoint. The audio makes sense without the slides, but the slides don’t make sense without the audio; you can listen to the audio first and then (optionally) browse through the slides. 2) Koster refers to this absolutely mindblowing video (this is my first

tapetenageln wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

A very good talk by Raph Koster summarizing the current developments in Web- and Game Design and similarities in their pattern, recently went through the Gamasutra Podcast Feed. It was given at the GDC 2007. Audio File. Slides.

Make My Social Web: Where Game Meets the Web : My Take wrote on March 12th, 2007 at 4:24 pm:

[...] This is from a comment I recently left to one of Raph Koster’s entries on his GDC presentation Where Game Meets Web. Its a great read, just be patient with the slides, it takes a while to get going.Raph starts out [...]

Relinquish control, take over the world from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 2:04 am:

[...] means longevity, said David Amor.Use web paradigms to create compelling experiences, explains Raph Koster, let them create, said Phil Harrison, lose control, argued David James.At the minute, it all feels [...]

GDC '07: Why not take a break? (Semifat Sediment) wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 2:19 am:

[...] the time I got to Raph Koster’s talk on the relationship (or lack thereof) between games and the Web, my brain was pretty much completely fried by overstimulation. Luckily, much of the ground he [...]

Grand Text Auto » GDC 2007 Recap wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 10:15 am:

[...] Hocking’s talk on Exploration From Systems to Spaces to Self, Raph Koster’s talk on Web 2.0 meets games, the star-studded gameshow Metagame: Battle of Videogame Smarts, the Sony keynote and the [...]

Jim on Web Games wrote on March 13th, 2007 at 7:31 pm:

del.icio.us/mashie Mar 13 Raph’s Website » GDC 07: Where Game Meets the Web Raph Koster’s GDC presentation - lots of insight, style, and a big Kongregate plug to boot. Mar 08 The Fancy Pants Adventure: World 2 demo Exclusive demo of the sequel to one of the best flash games of all time.

Timbre of Tempests wrote on March 14th, 2007 at 10:37 am:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/03/10/gdc-07-where-game-meets-the-web/

General Discussions :: RE: The importance of a good website wrote on March 16th, 2007 at 5:22 pm:

[...] To follow-up, where the website becomes truly important is when you’re trying to attract fresh blood into text MUDs rather than just shift existing MUDers around. It’s also worth taking into account the coming shift in virtual worlds that will strongly blend web 2.0-esque features with virtual world features. There are a lot of ways for text MUDs to really blend the “MUD” with the “website” (I would rather look at the whole thing as the “experience” though, which includes everything from the MUD to customer emails to the forums to the website and even to fansites, even if the latter is not really in your control.) Raph Koster gave a lecture last week at the GDC (Game Developer’s Conference) called “Where the Game Meets the Web”. Check it out: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/03/10/gdc-07-where-game-meets-the-web/–matt [...]

Kloonigames - Monthly experimental games wrote on March 16th, 2007 at 10:21 pm:

recorded during the session (thanks Louis). As for the conference, it was great. It was my first GDC, and I really enjoyed it. I got to attend some really great lectures, like Chaim Gingold’s Spore’s Magic Crayons and Raph Koster’s Where Game Meets Web, but my favorite was easily the Nuances of Design session by Jonathan Blow. At the Nuances of Design session we had our own laptops there and we played the games as the designers talked about them. I really hope there will be a Nuances of Design

Ludomancy » GDC 2007: My Impressions wrote on March 17th, 2007 at 6:50 am:

[...] Where game meets web by Raph Koster: Mr. Koster really wanted to make an effect in this lecture. He sort of doomed the “mainstream” game industry by stating that content can be generated by the users themselves (like Spore does), and then doomed content creators by stating that “out there is a lot of people better than you are, willing to generate the content for free”. This whole Games 2.0 intitiative has very profound implications on game design and development because the players are also the developers. But I won’t go over it right now; meanwhile you can read a presentation about it in Raph Koster’s blog. [...]

General Discussions :: The importance of a good website wrote on March 17th, 2007 at 11:41 pm:

Cambrian House Investor Water Cooler Update wrote on June 10th, 2007 at 6:37 am:

[...] Koster session on building online communities using video game concepts (Find PPT [...]

Raph’s Website » Gamasutra posts audio of Where Game Meets The Web wrote on June 12th, 2007 at 2:57 pm:

[...] Gamasutra has posted the audio of my GDC lecture ‘Where Games Meets the Web’. You can follow along with the slides which are here. [...]

Creativity In Design - RobZepeda.com: Tracking Player Data Makes For Better Games wrote on August 10th, 2007 at 8:52 am:

[...] Koster talks a lot about integrating web practices into game development and at GDC 2007, presented Where Game Meets Web. Highly enlightening, Koster discusses how by using data tracked from their users, web developers [...]

links for 2007-09-11 (Leapfroglog) wrote on September 10th, 2007 at 10:25 pm:

[...] Raph’s Website » GDC 07: Where Game Meets the Web At this year’s Game Developer Conference, Raph explained web 2.0 to game designers and developers. This resulted in a very entertaining set of slides at least. (tags: GDC07 RaphKoster web2.0 games gamedesign slides presentations) [...]

A Japanese View on Games and Learning: March 2007 Archives wrote on November 7th, 2007 at 3:14 pm:

[...] 07: Where Game Meets the Web (Raph Koster) http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/03/10/gdc-07-where-game-meets-the-web/ Posted by tfuji at 01:46 AM | Comments [...]

Daum 백과사전 : 컴퓨터·비디오 게임 wrote on December 16th, 2007 at 2:24 am:

[...] ((영어)) GDC07 - Where Game Meets The Web - 라프 코스터의 [...]

Reader Comments

Patrick said on March 11th, 2007 at 12:26 am:
That talk was the best one of my whole conference. When you suggested that designers should have at least some layering of charlatanry and pretension, I cackled. I guess its all about constraints.

On friday I gave $20 to Sausha Lowell, the virtuoso hobo outside the west hall. I wouldn’t have given it to him if it weren’t for your rating hiw of his content. He graduated with a degree in philosophy and wants to write a book. I told him to get himself a free gmail account at the library and then mail sections of it to his account - free storage.

What was cool about the talk, overall, was that it made me feel like humanity could transform into something good and sustainable, but it also made me feel like I could make some mad money in the near future.
baldur said on March 11th, 2007 at 6:22 am:
Excellent. And I disagree with you about this not being interesting to Web 2.0 geeks. One of the most interesting things about current development on the web is where we are able to blur the lines between play, social and work.

We can’t in every case, but we can in more places now than we used to several years ago. This presentation is directly relevant to anybody who’s making anything that appeals to more than one person working on his or her own.
Raph said on March 11th, 2007 at 6:54 am:

Ah, well, I have a whole separate talk that is basically about web meeting game, e.g. from the other direction. Lots of lessons for web geeks to learn from games, methinks. Expect to hear from on that at both ETech and Web 2.0 Expo.
baldur said on March 11th, 2007 at 7:41 am:
Very cool. Makes me wish I could afford to go to things like Etech and Web 2.0 Expo. Looking forward to seeing the presentation online.
joshlee said on March 11th, 2007 at 9:05 am:
I think the Web folks have already learned a lot from the game folks: look at Google Image Labeler and Amazon Askville. Or the change of heart on the part of the usability gurus a while back, when they realized that aesthetics could contribute to functionality rather than always obscuring it.

Anyway, it was a great talk, although I almost made a run for it at the beginning when you suggested that we all bolt for the Three Rings session. Glad I stayed.
Allen Sligar said on March 11th, 2007 at 9:45 am:
Awesome talk, whats funny is the older guy sitting next to me visibly winced when you said (paraphrase) “If you havent read this book, (The Long Tail) then you are a dinosaur.”

After the talk I spoke to him (he was in marketing) briefly. We spoke about the long tail, he thought it was a “hard economics read” and I assured him it was very assessable to non-econ geeks.

Notable Quoteable: “Bits are Dead” good stuff….
Jim Greer said on March 11th, 2007 at 12:39 pm:
I’m such a dipshit for missing this talk. Thanks for the Kongregate plug!
Morgan Ramsay said on March 12th, 2007 at 12:51 am:
If you haven’t read The Long Tail, you’re a dinosaur.

There are many, many arguments against that statement on many, many levels.

Dinosaurs dominated terrestial ecosystems for 160 million years. Dinosaurs constantly evolved over the course of 160 million years. I don’t think the term dinosaur when used to mean “not up-to-date” is collectively fair to, well, dinosaurs.

I think the more appropriate statement would be, “If you’re not constantly learning, staying on top of the curve, and testing your limits, your professional value is increasingly diminished.”
jbonnell said on March 12th, 2007 at 12:47 pm:
Those of you who are Web 2.0 geeks will likely find nothing much that is interesting here, honestly — but those of you who are straight up game geeks may find it enlightening.

I think one thing missed by the gamer side is exactly what you point out above, Raph. You really are telling game developers they need to learn something from the web 2.0 crowd. Especially when you see a comment like this:

I think the Web folks have already learned a lot from the game folks: look at Google Image Labeler and Amazon Askville. Or the change of heart on the part of the usability gurus a while back, when they realized that aesthetics could contribute to functionality rather than always obscuring it.

Frankly, though, a lot of the web 2.0 crowd could learn alot from the web 2.0 crowd… did that make sense? Doesn’t matter, that’s a different post.

You recap web 2.0 design concepts wonderfully and let people draw their own conclusions as to how to implement them in modern game systems. Will a lot of people hear? Let’s look at one of the 800 lb gorilla’s out there.

Sony had two big annoucements at GDC: Home and LittleBigPlanet.

Home tries to get it, but, I fear, is going to miss the mark. Its just like Kaneva and SecondLife-lite. While there is an attempt at UGC, its in a nice sterile sandbox and eventually everyone will be more or less alike.

LittleBigPlanet embraces the UGC concept. Use our platform to create levels and uploaded them to the servers and resell them to the user base. Ratings, Rankings, and Reputation. Game as a platform. They got it all.

Now which one was by the big corporate giant and which the small, lithe, developer? I’m not sure Sony knows what it’s got it’s hands on, but they better be nice to an innovator like this one. They see where the industry is going.
Solok said on March 12th, 2007 at 4:03 pm:
Good information Raph. I enjoyed going through the slides.
Raph said on March 12th, 2007 at 10:36 pm:

I think the ZIP is fixed. Anyone wanna try it?
Sean Bulger said on March 13th, 2007 at 4:43 pm:
This, along with the other two sessions you were involved in at GDC, were absolutely great. It was actually rather revolutionary for me in particular. I hadn’t spent that much time looking into Web 2.0 seriously. While I had followed it lightly, and I have taken advantage of what it provides, I hadn’t ever really connected it with game development.

I’ll be avoiding that mistaken in the future.

I’m rather interested in just how many sessions I went to that covered topics along these lines as well. It definitely seems to be creeping up into a few different corners of the industry. I’m happy I decided to go to this one as opposed to the other session I was eying at the same time.
Hanford said on March 16th, 2007 at 7:55 pm:
Just two sessions before Raph’s I was in the “State of Indie games” roundtable session, and sadly, it appeared no one but me actually understood anything about the current trends in the web.

The discussion turned towards the “gatekeepers” of console content, AKA Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. I tried to explain to the people in the session that these companies understand The Long Tail and realize that it actually does not make sense for them to keep games off of their system (as long as they get a cut of the profit). That long-term they’re working on ways to get more games onto their platforms, and eventually let anyone release a game (getting a cut of the sale, of course). Like I said, no one who spoke up understood this and insisted that the consoles will forever be an exclusive group because they don’t want to see a “crash” again. I wish everyone in that session could have seen Raph’s session.

That being said, the Long Tail really only applies to aggregators. It doesn’t change things too much if you’re a content producer. I don’t believe Raph is advocating that the games industry stop producing content in favor of aggregating it; only that there’s some advantages to being an aggregator. There’s more ranting where that came from.
del piero said on March 20th, 2007 at 1:33 pm:
Lavoro eccellente! ..ringraziamenti per le informazioni..realmente lo apprezzo: D