The 2010 Game Developers Conference (GDC) kicked off in San Francisco yesterday with the who’s-who of the development world in attendance, and they were still at it when most South Africans were toddling off to bed. Operating in tandem with the GDC is the Independent Games Festival, an event that gives independent developers a platform to discuss indie specific issues. Below we have summarised some of the biggest discussions and announcements to emerge from day one.
Social Gaming Summit
Social network gaming was widely discussed during day one. In one panel discussion, console developers were described as “in denial.” From a business perspective, the question was raised as to how important complicated game development is when poor quality social games are generating huge numbers of players, which to online media companies simply means huge average daily unique visits.
One panellist cited the example of a social game which draws 20 millions players in just about nine days, something that AAA titles can’t match. During a different discussion, Farmville developers cited a 32 million daily user count.
During his keynote address Gareth Davis, platform manager at Facebook, drove home this point with some statistics: a 400 million global audience, of which 200 million people play games on the service each month. Davis also outlined his vision of multi-platform social games, where each platform (phone, console, PC) has a unique gaming experience, but it all constitutes a single game. He also discussed the increased use of social relationships to define the game’s parameters. He ended off by saying that he thinks the iconic social networking game – “the Mario of Facebook” – has yet to emerge.
The Indie Games Summit
The Indie Games Summit saw a number of prominent speakers on day one, all giving their insight into this segment of the industry.
Ron Carmel of 2D Boy (World of Goo) described the relationship between independent developers and publishers as a flawed system, explaining that 15 years ago, a publishing deal was a necessity for commercial success. In the age of digital distribution, such complex deals are no longer required said Carmel, citing the relative ease of distributing through a system such as Steam. Carmel also discussed the recently established Indie Fund, which is an angel fund created by a group of established developers to help new comers gain a foothold and become financial sustainable.
Handling public relations and marketing was discussed in depth, as was advice on keeping an indie studio financial stable during 2010. In his keynote address, Randy Smith of Tiger Style, developers of the iPhone game hit, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, discussed key elements indie developers must focus on achieving if they really want to be a commercial success.
Battlestar Galactica MMO
German developer Bigpoint, mostly known for their web portal games, has announced that it is developing a browser based Battlestar Galactica MMO. With 110 million global subscribers, Bigpoint CCO Nils-Holger Henning, cited a desire to bump the American market from their number three clientele spot, to number one. This appears to be a move toward IP based titles for the company which has set up a new head office in San Francisco. Bigpoint also announced plans to allow PC versus iPhone play through its service.
Sony Releases PhyreEngine for PSP
Sony’s free development middleware, PhyreEngine, will be updated with PSP support in the coming months, giving start-up developers another platform inroad. The PhyreEngine is optimised to take advantage of PS3 hardware, but can be easily ported to other platforms. Since its release in 2008 there have been a number of successful games released on the PSN. Sony confirms that this latest move is to encourage continued development interest in the PSP platform, with the hopes of some great new PSP exclusive titles.
XNA 4.0 from Microsoft
Microsoft has announced that the XNA 4.0 development package is available. The toolset will have enhanced features for the Xbox 360 and PC platforms, and will introduce support for the Windows Phone 7 platform. Microsoft stated that they are trying to draw more large studios toward the development platform, which has so far largely been adopted by indie developers.
Thanks goes to Gamasutra – the official media partner of the event – for their cracking live coverage of the GDC and IGF. In-depth analysis of the discussions can be found at Gamasutra.
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