MMO Past Present & Future summaries
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. 😉
Thanks for the link! Enjoyed what you had to say, as usual. =)
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.
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.
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.
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!
It was a very inspiring talk.
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