Raph’s Website » AGDC07: overall takes

AGDC07: overall takes

September 9th, 2007 (Visited 3829 times) Tags:

My sense was that this was a conference in transition, and not just because it was under new management. I said several times that it seemed like two conferences: one where the traditional AAA MMO developers were wondering why their talks on massively concurrent streaming architectures were side-by-side with lectures about Web 2.0 caching.

There was a level of… not disdain, but bewilderment, I think. At one point I was chatting with a friend who has worked on the big games for years, and he said “seems like you’re doing something sort of… webby.” Like it was a term for something minor, or insignificant, or something. He also wasn’t going to attend the Nexon and Habbo talks because they were “webby.”

The mix of keynotes was done intentionally, Rich Vogel told me — he wanted to have Morhaime speak first, and then people go to the next two keynotes and realize that their context was wrong. I am unsure it worked.

I ended up having a discussion with some folks, as we walked from one after-conf party to another, about how conservative the game industry actually was. Slow to adopt new technologies, for example — it took until DirectX 6 for that to get used, and we’re still mostly working on DX7-8 games now, when the cards for sale are all DX10. Online took ten years to get adopted widely even though there were early companies on the fringe pulling down millions. And even today, the adoption of even the basic web technologies into AAA MMOs is minimal, even though everyone clamors for them — a guild update on an RSS feed, doing crafting on a cell phone, chat interfacing to IM networks, and countless other things that have been tossed around for years but nobody does.

I had another guy, ex-co-worker, come up to me and say “Man, it’s great to see you give that design lecture. You’re always out there talking crazy and it never makes any sense, but it’s good to see.” Meanwhile, I also had a guy from the web side of things, someone at his first AGDC, come up to me after the lecture and say “So, was any of this material actually new to people here? I mean… it was all such obvious, basic stuff.” The gap really is that big.

One thing that is clearly an issue is that the gap exists on the side of the players as well. Lots of reactions from players are “this new style of gaming sucks.” I can relate, believe me. I do not have answers for these sort of players other than to say that once again, technologies and approaches accrete, not replace. The games they love will not go away. But there may be less of them.

For me, some of the tension was epitomized in Damion’s excellent talk. I agreed with just about everything he said, but trying to reconcile what he said with the Habbo Hotel talk was interesting. Despite the railing against the term “hardcore” that he did, there were nonetheless assumptions from that AAA world threaded throughout what he said:

using credit card signup and monthly billing as example exit points that were taken for granted
“little Billy discovers girls” being an exit point we cannot affect (hello, HorOrNot)
the use of “levels” in the traditional sense, a word already loaded with tons of assumptions

Now, he himself said that he was talking about general principles that applied to any sort of game, and I agree with him on that too. Maybe he just tailored his examples and language to the audience.

There is no doubt in my mind that the eventual market accomodation lies somewhere in the middle on most of these issues (though there will be some clear winners — digital distribution strikes me as one such). Erik Bethke from GoPets talked about needing to add more game structures to his social world, for example. And that echoes everything I have been lecturing to the web guys about for the last year and a half. But my worry after seeing AGDC is that many of the folks I know will get left behind in the shift to the middle. I hope not.

Some other takes worth reading:

Oh, and some Japanese takes on “Designing for Everywhere.”

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The Next Generation » Grimwell Online wrote on September 9th, 2007 at 10:56 am:

[...] [Fair being fair, I found this linked on the Brinking blog via a link from Raph.] [...]

Wonderland: The Games Industry is slow-moving? wrote on September 9th, 2007 at 4:28 pm:

[...] thinks so, and now that he’s pointed it out, it’s pretty easy to agree with:Online took ten years to get adopted widely even though there were [...]

Areae, Inc. wrote on September 10th, 2007 at 12:25 am:

here. The panels that Raph participated in were Startup Lessons from Recent Online Games and Where Are the Biggest Online Gaming Opportunities?. In addition, You can read Raph’s general AGDC wrapuphere. All in all, a great AGDC. Keep an eye on us at Virtual Worlds Fall and Virtual Worlds Europe. We look forward to having more updates for you all soon, and can’t wait to let you in on some of our secrets!

Could APG Become Reality? wrote on September 10th, 2007 at 7:27 am:

[...] out what Raph says: …the adoption of even the basic web technologies into AAA MMOs is minimal, even though [...]

WorldIV » Auxilliary Pervance Gameplay wrote on September 10th, 2007 at 9:10 am:

[...] Kilo also pointed out a great quote from Raph Koster’s summary of this year’s Web2.0 themed AGDC. And even today, the adoption of even the basic web [...]

RLMMO :: View topic - Austin GDC stuff wrote on September 10th, 2007 at 2:45 pm:

[...] Overall takes: Mine: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/09/09/agdc07-overall-takes/ Cuppy’s: http://www.cuppycake.org/?p=233 Lum’s: [...]

The Beyondo Blog: Industry? wrote on September 10th, 2007 at 4:01 pm:

[...] industry doesn’t understand why all this web-stuff is popping up in their tradeshows and products (AGDC07: overall takes)Time to move on.It’s an industry. People don’t always get it. People approach things differently.I [...]

Psychochild’s Blog » Austin Conference Talk: Emerging Business Models wrote on September 11th, 2007 at 1:23 pm:

[...] our talk was in the same time slot as Raph Koster’s talk, so most of you probably didn’t see our talk even if you were at the conference; most of the [...]

Game Tycoon»Blog Archive » Articles of Interest wrote on September 11th, 2007 at 11:11 pm:

[...] Raph’s take on the event as a whole. I think he makes some good points about major business and design assumptions that seem [...]

Raph Kostes, Future of MMO Design, and some questions - Flying Lab Software Forums wrote on September 12th, 2007 at 9:19 am:

[...] Kostes, Future of MMO Design, and some questions Isildur linked to Raph Kostes’ page mentioning his review of AGDC07 and I found a part of it very interesting. [...]

Raph Kostes, Future of MMO Design, and some questions - Flying Lab Software Forums wrote on September 13th, 2007 at 1:28 am:

[...] Future of MMO Design, and some questions Isildur linked to Raph Koster’s page mentioning his review of AGDC07 and I found a part of it very interesting. [...]

JustinGibbs.com | interactive story will save the metaverse wrote on September 14th, 2007 at 5:32 pm:

Raph Koster’s blogpost about the Austin Game Developers Conferencemade me think how rich I should be one day. I had another guy, ex-co-worker, come up to me and say “Man, it’s great to see you give that design lecture. You’re always out there talking crazy and it never makes any sense, but it’s good to

Massive Update: Weekly MMO News news from 1UP.com wrote on September 14th, 2007 at 6:01 pm:

[...] Raph Koster [...]

Raph’s Website » AGDC07: overall takes wrote on September 24th, 2007 at 4:43 am:

[...] AGDC07: overall takes [...]

Sweet Gaming - Today’s Top Blog Posts on Games - Powered by SocialRank wrote on October 1st, 2007 at 3:52 am:

[...] Raph’s Website » AGDC07: overall takes [...]

JuJutsu said on September 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am:

Part of my angst about web 2.0 gaming is that, to use Damion’s triangle, it seems one-sided….98% social networking, 1% world and 1% game. I certainly have no problem with any specific web technologies you mention in this post.

If one error is trying to replicate WoW, is there another in trying to replicate Facebook?

“Erik Bethke from GoPets talked about needing to add more game structures to his social world, for example.”

I find great comfort in snippets like that….

Raph said on September 9th, 2007 at 9:56 am:

Trying to replicate Facebook is certainly a bad idea if only because you shouldn’t try toppling the giant, most of the time.

What I see is sites like Facebook adding games at an incredibly rapid rate:

http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2007/08/31/could_the_time_sink_that_is_facebook_help_lfg.html

So, the convergence works both ways…

polytropoi said on September 9th, 2007 at 10:16 am:

http://nilch.com/austin_gdc

Perspective of wannabee worldbuilder from Austin. I also loved what you said about all games used to be User Generated Content, because it was just a guy building it in a garage. The AAA titles set the content bar very high in terms of quality and quantity, especially for 3D stuff. It’s not just that they put on so many resources, but the tools are either proprietary or expensive or both, out of reach of indies. But tools like Blender and Unity are bridging that gap, and the rise of net-based gaming and community shows that it’s not as important as they think.

Nabeel Hyatt said on September 9th, 2007 at 10:53 am:

Damion’s triangle stuck with me after the conference, it doesn’t feel right but it is certainly a way of talking about the issues. I would say, JuJutsu, that it actually helps unite the two worlds — of COURSE GoPets could use some more gameplay. And Craig over at GAIA has commented many times on the need to add more gameplay. Even Doppelganger and There have talked about it recently.

I agree with Raph, the guys like GoPets, Gaia, and Habbo expose themselves to the lessons of MMOs even if they aren’t there yet. Sulka referenced UO and WoW multiple times in his talks with ease. There seems to be less interest from the MMO community in exposing themselves to the broader context of what they are really building.

Joe Ludwig said on September 9th, 2007 at 12:37 pm:

Many of your examples of conservativism in the game industry have rational explanations. The installed base of DX10 cards is crap compared to DX8 cards. Until the mid-nineties, networking was limited to local BBSes for just about everyone thanks to the per-hour fees on all the online services. RSS was not particularly widespread when all of the current crop of MMOs were starting up development.

I *love* the idea of putting web-type features into our game, but it’s not free. We’re working on a 1.0 product here. Everything we add pushes out our ship date and makes us survive even longer before we have revenue. Since most MMOs are from new teams, they are facing the same choices we are, and would have to deliberately leave out something else to make room for the RSS feeds on the schedule. MMOs take so long to make that we really would have needed to make that decision years ago when the draw of web-based community features was much less obvious.

Now what I don’t understand is why established games don’t all have these kind of features. WoW has done some of this stuff with the Armory, but it seems like an obvious way to make your game more sticky at the cost of a month or two of coding time.

Scott Jennings said on September 9th, 2007 at 2:37 pm:

WoW’s armory is a HORRIBLE example of Web 2.0 buzzword compliance. You can’t just get a raw data feed for your character or guild, you have to scrape the huge multi-hundred-K shiny graphic pages just to get a guild list. It says something that lots of folks have built 3rd party tools despite the state of the data exported.

(Sorry, ranting, don’t mind me.)

Morgan Ramsay said on September 9th, 2007 at 5:15 pm:

I ended up having a discussion with some folks, as we walked from one after-conf party to another, about how conservative the game industry actually was.

I think conservatism is the wrong word. Conventionalism is more accurate. Most people are fearful of the unknown, and so the idea that they would act on their imagination and do something beyond what they’ve been doing is horrifying. We can rationalize their fear by calling out risk management and the cost of investing in something different, but ultimately, the risks and costs of complacency are greater.

This behavior isn’t confined to interactive entertainment. It’s worldwide.

The games they love will not go away. But there may be less of them.

I love this line, not because it’s true, but because it avoids the hard truth. We’ve seen the actual phenomenon time and time again. Products come and go, and while the consumers are always there until they die, they also move on. They might hold on to what they loved, as in the case of, say, Elvis fans. Or they’ll find something else to satiate their lust, as in the case of popular music lovers. Just a few years ago, Limp Bizkit was huge. They were seen as a pioneer in the rap-metal scene. Where are they now? How about Sugar Ray? Who cares? The consumers who loved them have transitioned to other bands that have taken the genre forward or backward.

I don’t think you need to coddle the diehards. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and they certainly have the will. From frustration comes ideation and innovation. One day, when the diehards are surrounded by “that webby stuff”, a few will perk up and “retrovate.” They’ll bring back what was lost, bill it as classic, and create a profitable trend.

Those diehards will be satisfied, but because they’ll be surrounded by “that webby stuff”, they’ll adapt. That’s what people do to survive. We see that happening now with arcade games and other games of yore. You might love MULE or Pac Man, but eventually, you started playing other games. You started exploring the marketplace, finding new jewels that you could love, too. While the classic games will always hold a place in your heart, you know that there are other things to do.

But here’s why it’s so difficult for developers to throw the diehards to the wolves, to let them out into the world on their own: most developers are diehards, too. They develop games that will impress each other. They develop what they know just as some musicians create music that only they enjoy. By the way, that’s how a lot of people deal with criticism. “Thick skin” in games is necessary, but a lot of people don’t have that thick skin. They think they do, but the fact that they avoid confrontations shows that they actually don’t. Instead of facing the music, they tell their critics that they don’t care what critics think about their games because they think their games are fun. This isn’t endemic to the games industry. We see this attitude in the movies industry as well. Are you tired of seeing the same movie over and over again in different colors? Yeah? Well, the people creating those movies are not. That’s what they know so that’s what they do.

I hate to say it, but if you look at the numbers, the units sold, the “best sellers list” and compare that with books or movies, the games industry isn’t growing because it’s filled with success. It’s filled with flops. I’m including World of Warcraft as one of many flops. This fledgling industry still needs to mature. It’s only been around, what, 20 years and some people think they’re in the big time? This is an industry where 5-7 years experience is senior-level. In defense, senior-level is 20-30 years experience. Again, my intent is not to inflame, but realistically speaking, this is an industry built by newbies. It’s a great accomplishment, sure, but there’s still a long road ahead.

joshlee said on September 9th, 2007 at 6:23 pm:

The Armory is a terrible attempt at buzzword compliance, but it’s not that much worse than Facebook or LinkedIn. Walled gardens are an issue that a lot of people are having a hard time with; it’s just hard for some companies to acknowledge that their customers’ data belongs to their customers.

I saw a lot of people at AGDC looking at “Web 2.0″ as this year’s “casual” — a buzzword that you can either try to cash in on or just ignore until the next trend comes along. I didn’t see much enthusiasm for engaging with the Web on its own terms. But honestly, if people don’t know what Line Rider or ilovebees are, it’s probably too late for them to jump on the bandwagon anyway.

Maybe someone needs to start up a Playful Web/Webbish Games conference, where Raph won’t feel so much like mommy and daddy are fighting. (It was Raph that made that remark, right? Or am I getting my panels mixed up?)

m3mnoch said on September 9th, 2007 at 8:12 pm:

say what?

uh. dude. those huge “multi-hundred-k” lists are xml docs. the whole site is nothing BUT a huge, xml data feed. they transform it through xslt to make it look like a web page. it’s probably the single, most badass web 2.0 thing any “real” game studio is doing right now — period.

view the source, dude. no scraping necessary. just load the file straight into your application.:
http://www.wowarmory.com/guild-info.xml?r=Bloodhoof&n=Apocalypse&p=1

you’ve got your guild stats xsl:
http://www.wowarmory.com/layout/guild-stats.xsl

you’ve got your guild roster xsl:
http://www.wowarmory.com/layout/guild-roster.xsl

it just doesn’t get better than that for a data feed for your application.

m3mnoch.

m3mnoch said on September 9th, 2007 at 9:09 pm:

it’s not that much worse than Facebook or LinkedIn

no, no, no.

facebook data is locked away. linked in data is locked away. the armory is a huge, real-time feed of all the persistent data in the damn game.

all of wow’s data is just a REST call away.

look at the source of this search page:

it’s all 52 drops in the slave pens. notice on the web page, tho, it’s paginated (ahem. page-uh-nated, raph…) to only show 20 items per page. but, you can get ALL 53(?) items from the entirely sexy, self-defining xml driving the page.

it would be a pretty trivial thing to build an entirely different game with a custom javascript engine while using the armory as an ajax data source. assuming blizzard wouldn’t sue you out of existence, that is.

i’d bet andrew could build a crazy cool thing out of that kind of “terrible buzzword” data.

joshlee said on September 10th, 2007 at 6:45 am:

Oops! That’s what I get for not viewing source. I haven’t seen a site that actually pushes XML+XSLT over the wire in forever. That’s some pretty yummy data. Now we just need to be able to update guild notes remotely, or somesuch.

Gene Endrody said on September 10th, 2007 at 7:27 am:

There’s so many angles to comment on here. Mainly, I’m just glad the conversation has evolved to this point and that there are strong, disruptive voices representing the web guys inside the games industry. A year and a half ago we didn’t even have that and it’s no wonder that so few web guys bothered to show up at game conferences. It’s nice to have peers who recognize that you actually exist. It would be nice if Club Penguin and Jagex actually showed up to these things to take a bow - maybe then there would be more of an audience for presentations like Habbo’s. As to acceptance from the boxed product guys - that’s an elusive thing which will come in time, likely when we’re eating their lunch and they’re trying to figure out what the hell happened. I’m in no hurry to compete with them anyway. That sounds more negative than intended because the boxed product guys have done great things, they will eventually clue in and as a small independant, that scares the crap out of me.

Talaen said on September 10th, 2007 at 7:33 am:

I think of it as a legacy problem, really. Even though the “webby” games are starting to make inroads, more “serious” gamers and more importantly, game developers are familiar with the standard AAA titles. They have trouble understanding the “webby” side of things because it’s foreign to them for the most part.

I could sketch out a high level concept for a traditional AAA MMO pretty quickly, because it’s what I’m familiar with what I’m into as a player most of the time. I could even, if I spent some time thinking about it, start coming up with mobility tie-in features that could be accessed via a cell phone or web browser without the full game client. But trying to come up with a game that in and of itself was “play everywhere”? Much harder for me to do. I think I could come up with something decent, but not nearly as easily as I could come up with a concept for a traditional AAA title.

We are still bound by the technology. You can do things with a full game client on a PC (or even on a console) that you simply can’t do through a web page or via a cell phone. There will always be some form of that gap there. So the challenge that’s facing the industry now I think is to try to come up with ways to preserve the gameplay that defines the AAA games while still reaching out to users via alternative interfaces. Maybe that’s augmenting the core game with mobility/accessibility features, like being able to manage your bank via a web page or craft via your cell phone. Or maybe that means designing synergistic gameplay for those other interfaces - so that your guys on cell phones are doing one thing, and your guys on PCs are doing something different, and it all contributes to the game world but in different ways.

JuJutsu said on September 10th, 2007 at 8:02 am:

“You can do things with a full game client on a PC (or even on a console) that you simply can’t do through a web page or via a cell phone.”

This is something I wonder about. I’m not a techie so pardon the the dumb question[s]. When you divorce the game from the interface do you [developers & designers] have to design to the ‘lowest common denominator’ so to speak? Is it possible and feasible to do what Talaen is talking about at the end of his/her post?

m3mnoch said on September 10th, 2007 at 8:24 am:

That’s some pretty yummy data. Now we just need to be able to update guild notes remotely, or somesuch.

yup. totally.

As to acceptance from the boxed product guys - that’s an elusive thing which will come in time, likely when we’re eating their lunch and they’re trying to figure out what the hell happened.

see? and from where i come from, the game industry is small potatoes.

it’s cute to see them swaggering around thinking they’re huge. i come from web-land. games are a just a blip. that web stuff, tho. it’s eating the enterprise software guys’ lunch, the mainstream media’s lunch, movies, music and television’s lunch — everything that can be digitized’s lunch.

it should be the other way around. the traditional game guys should be trying to figure out how to get into the web guys’ game. i mean, when habbo or maple story or runescape or club penguin are small by web standards (myspace anyone?), but are equal or greater in size than the “800-pound gorilla” called wow? i mean, c’mon. get some perspective.

myspace (the web 800-pound gorilla) does about as much in yearly ad revenue as wow does in yearly subs according to news corp’s recent earnings call. the big difference? they have about (pulling this number right out of you know where, but it’s really the scale that matters, not the actual digits.) 1/100th the maintenance overhead. profit, profit, profit.

wake up game people.

yeah, i’m talking to you mr. traditional game developer. do you know what someone like hp’s MONTHLY online ad budget is? heh. more than your whole project costs.

m3mnoch said on September 10th, 2007 at 8:31 am:

heh. or, to put it another way:

Electronic Arts Mkt Cap: 15.96B
Amazon Mkt Cap: 34.27B
Google Mkt Cap: 160.28B
Microsoft Mkt Cap: 266.92B

small. potatoes. (relatively speaking, of course.)

Scott Jennings said on September 10th, 2007 at 8:40 am:

> uh. dude. those huge “multi-hundred-k” lists are xml docs.

Wow. That’s a lot better than the last time I viewed source on those. Yeah, that’s workable.

Prokofy Neva said on September 11th, 2007 at 11:11 am:

I’m so glad you captured this distinction of “webby”. Absolutely. While geeks from Web 2.0 keep looking at virtual worlds with disdain and want them to “become the Internet” or “realize they are the Internet”, people in virtual worlds don’t want them to become webby.

We want worlds to be worlds, and web to be web. Webby is, you know, Neopets. Yahoo Bookworm. Not Second Life. But… of course we admit that web is where the millions are, where the ads are, and where you designers will flock, and that worlds are going to remain as boutique items. Ok, then. Plan accordingly.

Re: leveling up. I was made a little uneasy by hearing my daughter once say something odd, like she was “morphing” and “leveling up” by turning 13. That is, she wasn’t saying this with humour and archness, she was just normally lifting the game language right out of all those games and applying it to real-life puberty.

AGDC07: overall takes

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