[...] is the full transcript, and here is some of the coverage:Next-gen.bizGamasutraBBC.ukAnd more linked here!Finally, we closed up the conference with a lecture by Raph and our lead programmer Sean Riley [...]

“Good luck making money on a Flash game,” said Neil Young.

If advertising doesn’t pay well for the Flash game market, how does Popcap (et al) stay in business?

It was through these media franchises that Wright came to a few conclusions about the nature of entertainment. “Entertainment is worlds,” he says, and not properties (which reminds him of real estate) or brands (which reminds him of Coca-Cola).

He goes on to talk about self-constructed identity through the involvement with the story and the character. This is a very different idea than the classic branding strategies but no different than how bands and songs succeed. For my money, virtual worlds are the rock ‘n roll of this generation. But something Raph said rings very true given how fast the luminaries can become the old school (been there and seen that twice now):

The fact is that those guys are learning our tricks much quicker than we are learning theirs. They are gamers. They understand the things that we are good at, like interfaces and they learn fast.”

As I said, we don’t know what the effect of speed is on human evolution, but we can see clearly that it speeds up the replacement rate of loci of influence. IOW, the control emergence at the local level is still a puzzle, but at the global level there is an innovation function on the rise wherever small circles adapt each others ideas instead of sampling and imitating the populist trends. As a result, the technical innovation is rising in different parts of the system (eg, as Raph points out, interfaces). At the same time we seem to be seeing story techniques and puzzle techniques going into a trough of sameness.

So the fun thing to watch for will be a new story genre which requires different puzzles and that changes the evolution of play. Where will this come from? A point from the history of music: at the beginning of the last century, musicologists were scouring the universities for the next big thing in composition. Meanwhile, the young turks of jazz such as Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke were having private solo duels after hours away from the commercial nightclubs for their own pleasure.

That combination of personal passion, in-tribe competition and well-honed chops is far more powerful than branding can be or ever will be. The hammer used skillfully does not break on the anvil. It shapes a new piece.

This led Peter Molyneux to mull over what the very concept of next-gen gaming is. “If I was a consumer, what would I be thinking is next gen — Call of Duty 4 or Wii? I suspect that we get excited by great and creative ideas but what do consumers get excited about?”

Peter, I refer you to this panel (video) I coproduced.

Following that was an off-site luncheon of the luminaries, featuring David Perry, Chris Taylor, Neil Young, Phil Harrison, and Peter Molyneax. Here is some of the coverage: Next-gen.bizGamasutraBBC.uk And more linkedhere! Finally, we closed up the conference with a lecture by Raph and our lead programmer Sean Riley called “Reinventing MMOs: A Metaplace Antemortem”. This was a session that explained a lot of the technical pieces that have gone into building