We
were recently able to sit down with Rich Vogel, Studio Director and Co-GM for
Bioware Austin, and Eugene Evans, from the Marketing department at EA. Both of
these gentlemen have been involved in the Game Developers Conference for years
and recently sat down with us, here at Curse, to discuss how this years'
conference will relate to MMO's and what aspects of the conference might be the
most beneficial to developers. The conference will take place this year in
Austin from Sept. 15th-18th and play host to a variety of informative sessions
designed to facilitate the sharing of information and techniques between
developers and industry leaders. There will also be keynote speakers, including
John Smedley from SOE, that will be speaking about the future of the industry,
and sharing their insight and experiences with those in attendance.
You can find our more about
GDC Austin at the official website.
Here's a look at the Curse.com GDC Austin Interview with
Rich Vogel(RV) and Eugene Evans(EE):
Curse: Gentlemen if you
could please briefly introduce who you are, and your relationship with GDC?
RV: I'm Rich Vogel and
I am the current Studio Director, Co-GM for BioWare Austin.
EE: And I am Eugene
Evans; I am responsible for marketing over here at Mythic which is another EA
studio. I was involved since I believe that first year of AGDC but I took couple
of year's hiatus on the board because I had a product to ship. So, but I have
been involved early on as well.
Curse: Sounds good,
okay. Our first question is, if there seems to be a running trend for this years GDC Austin, it seems to be how the game(no pun intended) has changed when comes
to making successful MMO's. Our keynotes are talking about new and innovative
ways to market, such as PlayFish using social media and Sony doing some
different types of research for Free Realms. With these types of keynotes what
exactly is the message that GDC is trying to send to attendees about MMO
development?
EE: The conference has
always had an online focus, and the nature of online gaming has broadened and
you know the way I come into to get on it and early discussion was you really
see two different things going on. You have this web, web 2.0, social network
world that brought networks of friends together who are figuring out that one of
the things friends like to do together is play games and they are struggling to
figure out what that means. And then from the other direction you have got
people with a history such as, you know, myself or Rich who have been involved
in what is historically the hardcore business starting to go "huh, there is
often lot of people playing interesting games in some of these social networks"
and you know, we are all seeking answers in the same way that hopefully all of
these attendees to the conference will and we wanted to give forum to people who
hopefully have some of those answers. A show like this should be educational and
also generate a dialogue and I think that we have got some great speakers who
are doing some interesting new things and by the nature of them being prepared
to turn up at the show or prepare to talk about it and hopefully back up a lot
of their experience with facts and real world examples.
Curse: That's actually
a great lead into the next question. What are some of the specific sessions that
will address exactly what you are talking about, you know, being a community
MMO's specifically. Who will you guys have talking about it and what will some
of the important sessions be for it?
RV: We have quite a
few sessions on, we have community and social networking track, which has people
talking about community development and social networking as sessions and then
within design track we talk... We have people coming from Free Realms as well as
Maple Story, and they will be talking about their experience with a different
model and a more casual audience model and how successful they've been and they
are going to talk about design challenges and things like that. Then arguably,
from the other side of it, we have speakers from places like GamerDNA, who are
trying to build one of these social networks for gamers too. I think are going
to give a great deal insight into what they have been able to, either infer, or
actually monitor as far as the behavior of these sort of players. You know, the
guy who plays WOW or Warhammer or another big MMO are just as likely to be going
off and playing Panzer or Zombies for many hours, which you could argue as
casual, but isn't really. As we're all getting together to look at the proposed
panel, we are looking for people who are doing interesting things in this space
and have data and experience to back it up.
Curse: If you
were to pick three of the core ideas that you think attendees and developers
will come away with this year, what would they be?
RV: I think the key one
is that our, our world is changing and that, you know these hardcore MMO's that
we look at WOW 10 million subscriber number and you look at Maple Story 24
million subscriber number, not subscriber, but registered users, you kind of see
that the broader reach games actually reach further than others do. And so these
games, I think it's really important to people that they get a good take away
and they say "wow things are changing" and it's not that you can't do a hardcore
MMO anymore, it's that you can't get away with some of the things you got away
with a long time ago, because there is a different audience today than there was
three or four years ago playing these games.
EE: Yes there are so
many more varieties of experience that we can deliver and we are going to learn
from the web guys, and the web guys are going to learn from the gaming guys and
we are all going learn because there are a lot of new things that are imagined
here.
RV: Yeah, and the good thing about this conference is actually bring
in the talent here to speak so people can get a good understanding of where
things are heading basically, and also share some of their experiences with
people who are currently have a lot of good online experience they can share
back with them.
Curse: What feedback
have you gotten from previous GDC events that you use to come up with things you
want to address for this event?
RV: We generally look
at feedback. So we generally look at feedback that people give us in the
conference and we also look at trend, so we look around, we see Playfish and
others that are doing very well with these social games, you know restaurant,
city and the like, and we say okay that's kind of new and unique. So let's bring
that kind of talent and bring it over here to talk about what they are doing and
what their experiences are. In that way we can share it with the group, because
again that's an emerging new area that's coming up and about in the social
networking stream. So, we kind of look for new trends, we also look for stuff
that's being going on and what people have learned and talk about, because
there's a lot of stuff today we are doing that's irrelevant, that's relevant as
well, that's very interesting to talk about at the conference too. Because
what's interesting is those people have never probably met people who do
hardcore RPG, MMORPG and they actually do, they can talk about all lessons
learned and apply that to their games as well, and vice versa. So it's a good
way of stirring the pot.
Curse: What is the
criteria that's used to kind of modify some of the sessions and things that you
have. So let's say you are going out looking at Playfish, what criteria do you
use to say okay this is something I think we need to integrate into our program?
RV: Well I look at how
many users they have, how big a deal it is and what kind of impact it has in the
world today, and then we evaluate if we'd want to see them if we were attending
this conference.
EE: Well actually we
are very selfish about this. All the board members are people who are trying to
get a job done and need the answers themselves. So it could be an audience made
up of just board member requests and we'd have an excellent demographic.
RV: Yeah that's true,
but it is I mean the basic thing is to make the conference dynamic and changing
with the times is very critical to us and that to us it's about content. That's
really what draws people and because we are, you know, we are kind of a nice
size for a conference. We have the ability to do that in a, being in a not huge
environment, if you understand what I am saying. It's kind of nice, it's tight,
it's a smaller environment.
EE: We have kept it to
a fairly singular vision of online.
RV: Yeah very focused.
And actually people like that, who attend as well. But I think content has got
to be king. We have to try really good content to bring people. And one of the
criteria's, as Eugene says, we were kind of selfish is "would I attend that
conference, would I attend that talk" is one of our criteria. Would I find that
interesting?
Curse: That sounds like
a great way to do it! All right so obviously sharing knowledge and networking is
a pretty important thing when it comes to GDC Austin. What is the event this
year specifically doing to foster social networking, as far as people meeting
each other and finding the right connections to get business done?
RV: We have implemented
MyGDC sort of application which will be applied to here, which helps people
network together. One of the good things about this conference because its
small, it's a lot easier to socialize and because of its size and it's focused
right. So one of the good things about this conference in the past, I've seen,
is a lot of people network very well here and there is a lots of parties that
are happening. There is lots of social things that are going on, and they get
people interested and start reaching out. The bigger thing I think is, you know,
when I see new people to this business coming in, there is a lot of very good
knowledge here and people here that they can meet and talk to and get their
cards. I mean as far as the mechanisms to do that, the only thing I know is
MyGDC is the area, that allows people to start and connect with each other.
Curse: Can you tell us
about some of the more interesting MMO focus panels that will be coming out this
year? What's like the one must-see panel that people who are interested in this
and MMO's should see?
EE: We have 3 very
strong keynotes that will all be must-see sessions and I think at the end of the
3 of them, you'll have a really broad view on where the online gaming space is,
with WoW at one end, Free Realms at another end of the triangle, and the
Playfish guys in a whole different space. There's 3 corners of an interesting
triangle of game development in the online space right there.
RV: Yeah, it's kind of
cool because you have your really hardcore RPG, which I call hardcore but it
really isn't, it's WoW and Everquest, and all the others that are out there,
War, all kind of going to that one end, and then you have the social networking
site which is Playfish, and then you have the Free Realms site which is very
casual kid's games, so we definitely cover with those 3 keynotes what we try to
do, is a different perspective on the online market. And we have some very good
sessions on the social networking and community one. We try to make sure that we
have some very, very good, very good sessions on all the tracks that we have.
Everything from production management to design.
Curse: If you
had any advice to give attendees this year, and being GDC's a pretty short
event, there's lots and lots to see. What would be a good way to spread out your
time so you get as much as possible?
RV: Yeah, so I would
say if I were attacking it, I would look in design track and what I would look
for is something that you think, not, something new, right, something innovative
in that. In each track I'd actually do that, if you want a good overview, then I
would go to the, you know, beginner sessions and mid-level sessions, and not the
higher end ones. Get a really good smattering of each discipline is what I would
do. If I was a designer, I'd definitely handle more design tracks. If I was a
programmer, I'd actually go to more programming and security, and I may even
attend a customer service track because that's more important to me as a
programmer too right? So yeah, my advice for anybody to get out of GDC is look
at the sessions, pick something that interests you in each one, and get a kind
of a balance, right? If you especially look for new and innovative ideas, like
micro-transaction. If you don't understand that, then there's some really good
sessions in design, production, management and business side, as well as CS4
side that I would actually go to on that.
Thank you Rich Vogel(RV) and Eugene Evans(EE) for sitting
down with us to discuss GDC Austin 2009!
You can find our more about
GDC Austin at the official website.
