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Microsoft Responds To Reports Of Xbox Live Account 'Jacking' It was only Thursday before last that I found out I was heading to Austin for the Austin Game Developers Conference and some Tabula Rasa themed events. Since then I’ve taken a tonne of pictures, hung out with some industry legends, had a childhood dream come true, inadvertantly LARPed with Richard Garriott, and taken a metric asstonne of pictures. Here’s a rundown of what I did on my trip to the Texas state capitol. Obligatory Picture Of A Bag Morhaime On Taking Over The World Game Writing Meets Star Trek In The Beginning Of AGDC Flight of Anti-Gravity Videos From Beyond Gravity Zero G Souvenirs Liveblogging The Dave Perry Q&A Enrolling At Logos Academy Logos Academy Swag Bag Are Microtransactions The Future of MMO Games? The Austin GDC Exhibit Hall In Pictures Post AGDC Slurpee Run
What do you get when you put Everquest II producer John Blakely, Matt Firor of ZeniMax Online Studios, Mark Jacobs of EA Mythic, Raph Coster of Areae, and GoPets CEO Erik Bethke into one room to discuss opportunities for increasing revenue and reaching new players in the MMO space? From what I saw this afternoon, you get a debate over microtransactions versus traditional subscription payment systems. I attended a panel called “Where are the Biggest Online Gaming Opportunities?” which was supposed to about experimenting with new MMO design and innovative new revenue models, but it quickly became a debate of old school MMO systems versus the new ones. The subject of microtransactions has popped up a lot this week, most notably in the Dave Perry Q&A from earlier in the day, where Perry sings the praises of the ad-supported, microtransaction funded business model.
The highlight of Friday at the Austin Game Developer’s conference is a Q&A session between Shiny Entertainment founder Dave Perry and GDC Director Jamil Moledina. The session is called “When Did (You) Last Level Up? Career Advice From an Industry Veteran, and it is sure to be somewhat helpful to those in the gaming industry as well as those trying to break in. I’ll be liveblogging the session from here in beautifully hot and humid Austin Texas, so hit the jump to follow along. This is my first liveblog, so be gentle.
Evan Skolnick never wrote a Star Trek episode, but he came close. He wrote for William Shatner’s Tek World comic, was involved in the Marvel Star Fleet Academy series, and even helped develop a digital Star Trek trading card game no one ever played. He may not have written for Star Trek, but the series has helped him throughout his career writing comic books and now video games. Though I will always remember him as the editor for Ghost Rider 2099, Skolnick is now a producer and editorial director for Vicarious Visions. Today at the Austin Game Developers Conference he talks about the influence the sci-fi series has had on his career in a presentation entitled, “Everything I Needed To Know About Game Writing I Learned From Star Trek”.
The Austin Game Developers Conference this year is highly focused on the MMO industry, so what better way to kick it off than with a keynote speech from Michael Morhaime, the president and a co-founder of Blizzard, makers of the most popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game on the planet? The keynote is entitled “How to Rule the World (of Warcraft): Ten Lessons”, and I fully expect to be able to create my own MMO competitive if not better than WoW by the time the speech lets up.
Despite a multitude of mysterious forces working against us, Kotaku has landed at the Austin Game Developers Conference, and by Kotaku I mean the entire Fahey division. To commemorate my making it to the Austin Convention Centre without spontaneously bursting into flame, I present you this picture of a bag and stuff. Every industry event begins with hundreds of people with various bags on them being handed another bag. Sometimes the bag is filled with goodness. Sometimes pamphlets. This one is the latter. Whee. It’s not a major gaming event until Kotaku starts taking pictures leaflets. Stay tuned for more from the AGDC floor!
Next weekend the Austin Game Developers Conference will be playing host to “She Got Game”, a conference presented by Women in Games International on Saturday the 8th that looks at the experiences of women in the gaming industry. The keynote speaker for the event will be Dona C. Bailey, a Professor at the University of Arkansas who is known in gaming circles as the first woman to create an arcade game. In 1980 Bailey designed and programmed the arcade classic Centipede along with Ed Logg, and her keynote will focus on women in the industry cultivating and communicating powerful ideas. “I’m hoping to be helpful to someone now who may be in a situation similar to the one I was in at Atari, said Bailey, ” I often wish there had been a group of WIGI colleagues back then from whom I could have gotten advice!”
Other topics to be discussed at the conference included the importance of diversity in development teams and how to expand MMO content and game play for women. More details after the jump.
