I lived through GameCity. It was excellent, and is among the most intense and fulfilling things I’ve ever worked for. Sunday night went on and on, which is why this post is delayed. Plenty of photo’s and text to go up in the next 48 hours.

Here’s part 2 of Lorne Lanning’s Keynote (Part 1 is here). The slides for this part were mostly text, so no images this time. Paraphrase qualifier applies, as always:

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(After speaking about cost versus innovation, he gave a little context about a few things. There’s a fragment here I can’t fit into the slides and notes I have but in it he spoke of reporters in L.A. asking about accidents for the evening news, namely “Is there any blood? We need blood for the evening news” – fits with his earlier idea of news often being “shock and awe” rather than useful information).

Novels were around and known before they were ever mass produced. It’s different for games because everything has happened so fast. They’ve become a mass produced product before they’re really well known or established as a medium, and this means that to be marketable they often have to use familiar play styles.

(These lists are verbatim from his slides):

Artistic Vision and Console Gaming:

• Rising cost… Publishers more conservative.
• Safer to invest… in incremental improvements of proven genres – already know how to sell.
• New genre… unpredictable forecast = greater risk.
• Director Vision… challenged by budget, marketing, time to market, and market conditions.
• Collective Team Vision = keeps vision directed toward marketplace – less room for individual vision.
• Greatest narrative works traditionally from personal expression.
• Retail conditions = increasing marketing / sales challenge.

What’s our cultural influence though?

Games are the most powerful medium to hit this planet. They will have more mindshare than any other, which gives them incredible influential ability. Right now, we’re just making games and having fun, but could do a lot more. Let’s take some rough figures:

How many gamers are there in the world? About 200 million so far. Average play time per week? 7 to 11 hours. Gamers average 7 hours in the US, and 11 in the UK, so let’s call it 8. The hours of mindshare that equals? 1,600,000,000 per week, or 83,200,000,000 annually. The Republican party couldn’t dream of that much, let alone pay for it.

We need people to step up to games with their cares. The industry is a sleeping giant. I see it as sleepwalking, because games are fun but not really switched on to their potential.

Has anyone here seen September the 12th? (He went on to describe the game and how the mechanic contains a moral, in that bombing terrorists creates more terrorists].

Before games can get to a wider demographic, there’s also a console purchase barrier. Needing to purchase dedicated games hardware limits the market, and to get over that we either need integration of games hardware with other things, or a game that is so good that it irresistably appeals to gamers beyond normal demographics.

Did anyone see this movie? (Slide: Cover of “Alexander”). It was a turd, but it made money. Here’s what it looked like in Blockbuster: (Slide: 64 copies of Alexander covering a shelf unit). Now how many people have seen The Fog Of War? It’s excellent. Do you think you can find it at Blockbuster? (Slide: Blockbuster shelf, copy of The Fog Of War buried amongst other titles).

The social value of things isn’t coincident with their market value. Here are three films made recently, and I guarantee that if many people watched them, the world would become a different place (Slide: The Corporation, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, and Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers).

Here’s another bad film: Poseidon. It was another blockbuster, and here’s what the market looks like between that and the kind of films I just mentioned (Slide: Cover of Poseidon tiled 71 times, 1 copy of Iraq For Sale in bottom right corner. Paraphrasing in this paragrpah is really heavy).

Digital distribution can combat these kind of market dynamics by catering to a long tail.

• Follows proven Itunes / Amazon models.
• Bypass shelf space limitations.
• Cut out manufacturing, shipping costs.
• Time for “word of mouth” to spread.
• Higher traffic sampling. At $3 a game we’d sample all kinds of stuff, but as things are when we lay down money on a game we expect it to be an absolutely amazing experience.
• Lower cost games can be developed and sold at far lower price points.
• Avoid “Blockbuster or nothing” conditions.
• Xbox 360 Arcade success stimulating small team startups.

(He gave Darwinia a shout out here too)

Has anyone here seen Loose Change? It was a conspiracy theory type view on 9/11 that never would have been funded or shown through traditional channels, but it got 3 million views.

Citizen media is a hopeful trend.

Another approach is Amortisation / Synergy:

• Marketing Synergy reduces risk on investment.
• Marketing budget spread across multiple venues.
• Increase eyeball impressions.
• Amortisation of digital assets a plus.
• Derivatives more likely once branding is established.

The initial punch of a brand is expensive, but anything following is made much easier by that punch.

Historic amortisations from Oddworld inhabitants:

1. A music video made with Abe.
2. Three network IDs made for G4 with Abe and Munch.

(He showed videos of them all, they really clearly had Oddworld Inhabitant’s spin on them, yet had nothing really gamelike beyond the IP).

Economic Realities and the Future:

• Increasingly difficult to brith new IP’s.
• Costs rising – Live Action Film / TV prod.
• Costs dropping – CG prod.
• Benefits of amortised 3D assets.
• Film / Game data resolutions closing in.
• Game Engines evolving toward “Entertainment Delivery Systems”
• Emergence of Director’s Tools.

Those director’s tools are basically going to end up as game engines.

There’s a lot of learning potential in games, and a lot of interest. For instance, the “ask and answer” type dialogue system in so many games is an information delivery system. It’s an easily converted technology and motivates exploration (Again, he showed some examples from an Oddworld game (Stranger’s Wrath, IIRC) of a character asking NPCs for information in a town).

Brain Age has been a hit game with seniors, yet they weren’t on anybody’s marketing forecast.

Game Engines have traditionally been “challenge and reward delivery systems”. They’re becoming the birthplaces of cultural and tribal communities. They’re headed towards also being linear narrative and cinematic engines, as well as curriculum delivery systems for education.

Previously, 3D digital film databases have been passing back into game production, sort of. Once you have your high res model, it’s comparatively easy to make a simpler model for a game.

Today, 3D game assets are passing back into film production (background LOD), but within sight is a time when film and game art asset databases are one and the same.

So here’s my announcement: Oddworld Inhabitants, in partnership with John Williams of Vanguard Animation, are going to be collaborating on the simultaneous production of a film and game, titled Citizen Siege. The project will be using shared art assets.

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(Continues in Q&A highlights).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 at 16:30 and is filed under Events, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.