We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.
The Player Recent Telltale Games addition Mike Stemmle, co-designer of Sam & Max Hit the Road and Escape from Monkey Island, and designer on the ill-fated Sam & Max Freelance Police. He also worked on Afterlife, but he doesn't think you remember it.
The Puzzle You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.
The Inventory
(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue
Peek hard at Mike Stemmle's Star Trek strategy after the break.
The Game Developers Conference has come and gone. Five very hectic days and over 250 posts later, we've still not caught up on sleep (and probably won't until the week before E3). As much as we'd like you to read every single post, one by one, and adding polite comments to each and every one of them, we're pragmatists.
Join us in the next few pages for a primer on all things GDC 2008. Comments can be found on the last page (Update: comments have been turned on for every page, so go crazy!) as well as a very special image for some of our readers who feel a strong infinity with writer Ludwig Kietzmann. Read on as we recap last week.
Playing (and being) Too Human Elsewhere that day, Silicon Knights' boastful Denis Dyack held a press conference showing off the latest build of Too Human (photos) and, lo and behold, the framerate was consistent and the game looked much improved from previous demonstrations. Our hands-on impressions were decidedly mixed, however; as one commenter aptly put it, "the controls hindered Baldur's gait."
Besides Microsoft, the other keynote of the conference was futurist Ray Kurzweil who, among other mind-blowing points, confirmed that by 2023 we will be injecting ourselves with plasmids. Speaking of which ...
BioShockTacular!
One of the Big Daddies of the conference (yes folks, plenty more puns to come!) was BioShock, with total rock star Ken Levine drawing quite a crowd. Levine et al. showed off early footage of the game, advised to keep story simple, talked Steamworks and even sent a splicer to check up on us.
GDCA and IGF Awards
BioShock was a major winner at the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA), walking away with honors for audio, visuals and writing (Ayn Rand woke from the dead to claim the writing award). Also announced that night were the Independent Games Festival awards, with World of Goo winning three nods and Crayon Physics Deluxe earning the Seamus McNally award. Cheer up, World of Goo fans, they already have a distribution deal for the Nintendo Wii. The best part of the award presentations were probably Mega64 and Zero Punctuation's hilarious videos.
Despite three accolades, BioShock didn't win Best Game. That award went to Portal along with design and innovation nods.
Portal: This was a Triumph
Remember last year when Portal was just a bullet point during the Experimental Games session? A lot has changed since GDC 2007, with almost everyone singing the game's praises. The night of their GDCA win, Valve revealed that Jonathan Coulton's Portal song "Still Alive" would be featured in Rock Band. Though we missed that performance (Coulton only hit 95% on vocals), we did happen to catch his concert on Friday where he, along with Leo LaPorte and Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont, managed to fail the song live on stage (video).
As one of the last sessions of the conference, designer Kim Swift and writer Erik Wolpaw delivered a Portal post-mortem (photos) for an overpacked crowd (did you see the line to get in?). Among other little details, the duo talked about the origins of the Weighted Companion Cube and the various final levels they tested.
On the more academic side of the conference, we were treated to a handful of lectures on Will Wright's Spore, including one on procedural music and user-generated content. (We didn't get a chance to write up the music lecture, which was a complex discussion on music theory and their in-house music editor based on Pure Data.) The user-generated content session (photos) provided, among other things, a glimpse at how to make a spaceship that looks like the PS3 "boomerang" controller and a GameCube. Perhaps the most fascinating talk of the conference was also given at the worst possible venue. Will Wright talked about the importance of worlds, of community ownership and of escapism and the power of science fiction. It was a mind meld of information being thrown out, which you can view yourself here. Unfortunately, the speech was at a club and it seemed like half of the attendees seemed to either not know who Will Wright was or did not care and kept talking loudly over him.
Excuse me, Wii're looking for Nintendo Nintendo's presence was a bit more subdued compared to last year -- not having the keynote speech tends to do that. There were announced dates for Wii Fit and WiiWare (May 19 and May 12, respectively). A lot of information came out about WiiWare, including titles LostWinds, Shantaeand a non-Sam & Max episodic series from Telltale. (No promises on demos for any of the titles.) We also learned more about the Wii Menu from Nintendo's Takashi Aoyama, who taught us why the blue LED light glows in a certain rhythm. Aoyama also revealed a potential "Pay & Play" option for developers who want to charge for online (e.g. MMO developers). In other Nintendo news, NWF writer JC Fletcher managed to sneak into a Smash Bros Brawl tournament for conference helpers (video) and one confused gentleman left his rock and discovered a "new" Nintendo interface.
Sony more or less packed up and left early (around 5:00pm on Thursday), but in the interim they did let us hang out in their Bloggers' Lounge (even Xbox 360 Fanboy editor Richard Mitchell) playing Singstar, flOwon PSP and Echochrome. They also held a Buzz! charity event. Outside the lounge they gave us the "in-shirt XMB" shirts -- especially ironic given that they didn't announce the much-hoped for in-game XMB feature.
Adventure Quest(ions) Whereas we felt really out of place at Sony's party, Telltale threw a zombified soirée attracting some of industry's best adventure game luminaries (many of whom, as it were, happen to work at Telltale). We were even lucky enough to pose a ridiculous adventure game puzzle to legends such as Steve Purcell, Ron Gilbert and Mike Stemmle. There's more to come, if threats on our life (wake up) don't come to fruition.
While not a "party," per se, Emotive did give a few attendees a jolly good time at their presentation, while everyone else just felt uncomfortable witnessing a series of unfortunate disasters. In Other News
Sessions GDC holds hundreds of sessions in its five day period. Most of them talk about programming and art techniques, and while we tried our best to attend them all (really, we did), a handful stood out as interesting and fascinating for even non-developers to enjoy. They also happen to be some of the most heavily-attended sessions in the conference. Experimental games? They got you covered. Angry designers and balloon parties? Yep, that too. This year's game design challenge produced a sure-fire hit for the much-coveted bacteria demographic.
Our old friend total rock star Ken Levine had his BioShock honored by a panel as one of the eight best examples of interactive storytelling alongside Ico, Thief, Plansecape and others. Looking to the future, Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack nearly came to blows with Timeshift's Matthew Karch over the relevance of storytelling for games both in the present and the future.
If you thought our earlier mention of Emotive was crazy, wait until you check out the gaming vest that actually beats you up for playing badly. Or the "luxurious" (i.e. pricey and eccentric) Z-dome. For more aural spats of craziness, how about this bit of licensed irony, a puzzling Slim Jim reference, or some German language lessons.
Joystiq's Ludwig Kietzmann after five days in San Francisco.
We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.
The Player Steve Purcell, illustrator and writer best known as the creator of Sam & Max. We're surprised he even talked to us after last year's drunken debacle.
The Puzzle You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.
The Inventory
(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue
Find Steve Purcell's solution to the "meta-puzzle" after the break.
James Cox, Warren Keyes, and Liam Wickham from Sony Computer Entertainment are currently hard at work on Sony's upcoming online initiative, Home. At GDC, they spoke to interested developers about creating content for the online service, and revealed a few new images of the service in action.
The Home Development Toolkit (HDK) is currently available for all developers, and includes the things necessary for 3D asset creation, object creation, and creation of arcade and mini-games. Support for 3D trophies is also available, although its currently as an "evaluation." Samples are included in the HDK, and documentation is offered in English, Japanese and Korean.
We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.
The Player Ron Gilbert, designer of The Secret of Monkey Island (amongst other LucasArts adventures), consultant on Penny Arcade Adventures and designer of Hothead's upcoming episodic series, Deathspank.
The Puzzle You're standing in front of a cave. The goal is to get inside the cave, taking care to foil the ferocious robot bear guarding the entrance first.
The Inventory
(1) perforated parasol
(1) rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle
(1) sealed manila envelope
(1) miniature macaroni Tim Schafer statue
Find Ron Gilbert's surprisingly direct solution after the break.
Among the few guaranteed assurances that come with GDC, one is perhaps the most constant: in the precious minutes you have to eat -- assuming you have any minutes at all -- you will cherish whatever sustenance you can cram down your gullet. It is with this in mind that we decided to snap pictures of (almost) everything we managed to eat this week, thus bringing the masses one step closer to really being there. Without further ado, enjoy the various foodstuffs (and the many, many sandwiches) of GDC.
Just because you may not have heard of most indie game developers doesn't mean they don't have the same rights as more mainstream devs. One of those inalienable rights? Getting made fun of by the Mega64 guys, which they got a hot, steamy helping of during the IGF Awards during GDC.
Our personal favorite? Watching a grown man appear to hump a keyboard. We're sure there was more context to it than that, but damned if we can tell you what it is. Hey, you go for all of GDC week without sleep, see how sharp you are.
We've got two more after the jump, check them totally out.
GDC 2008, we were just beginning to get to know you. After a week of hectic posting, you're already gone.
While we're still catching up with final posts from the show, we bid San Francisco farewell with this time-lapse video. Because nothing captures the bittersweet end of a tradeshow like time-lapse.
Shots include the crowd filling into the Fable 2 and Portal sessions, respectively. Plus, you'll see attendees swarm through the lunch area and might catch a glimpse of your favorite bloggers. For the full effect -- especially if you're trying to spot people in the crowds -- be sure to watch the HD original in full-screen.
Watching us from afar in San Francisco's Grand Café (the one where, legend has it, Justin ate six PlayStation 3s and drank a PSP shake) was the ghost of a one-time splicer from BioShock (here's visual reference). Even weirder still, our waiter was a Big Daddy -- don't ask with what (or rather, on whom) he wrote our orders.
One of our favorite annual sessions, in addition to the developers rant and the design challenge, is the Experimental Games session. Whereas last year we saw audio-infused titles and a then-lesser known Portal, this year's themes were replay, obfuscation, user-generated/controlled levels and "two levels at once," with a presentation by Rod Humble halfway through. (We unfortunately had to miss the two final themes to catch the Boom Blox presentation. Sorry, folks!)
The first theme was "replay" and dealt with idea of, erm, playing with yourself. It's not as dirty as it sounds:
On Friday night we were lucky enough to witness a pretty special event: geek-rock troubadour Jonathan Coulton performing his song "Still Alive" at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. There's nothing new about that, he's been performing it since Portal's release last year. What is new is that he was playing it in Rock Band, where it's due to be released as downloadable content, and we just so happened to get it all on camera.
Unfortunately, most of Coulton's Rock Band band wasn't quite up to his level, with the lone exception of ... hey, it's Mahalo Daily's Veronica Belmont, who you should recognize from her GDC videos here on Joystiq.
One of the Harmonix folks there told us the track was only in production for an unusually short six weeks, thanks in no small part to Valve's willingness (you might even call it eagerness) to license the song. They also said that, though nothing has been finalized yet, they're expecting the track to be attractively priced at $0.99 leaving you no reason to avoid it. High-def video embedded after the break.
We did a terrible thing at last week's Game Developer's Conference. Aside from our usual barrage of photographs and "reporting," a select group of attendees had to endure a particularly inane and utterly pointless line of questioning -- just for laughs. This is what happens when you hunt down several adventure game connoisseurs and challenge them to solve a typically obnoxious adventure game puzzle.
We did a terrible thing at last week's 
We did a terrible thing at last week's 
