Muun visits the Australian Game Developers Conference
Gordon 'Muun' Calleja, 2005-12-12

There he was; this guy who looked exactly like me, wearing my brown linen pants and my beloved Ranma shirt…holding…an…IRON. He stared back at me from the mirror dumbstruck for a few minutes and then; it slowly dawned on me: I … was… ironing! I've had my fair share of important interviews and hot dates and yet, I could not remember the last time I had even contemplated ironing an item of clothing (barring terrible flashbacks featuring my mother holding a double barrelled shotgun and piles of recently washed clothing). Yet here I was, quite happily ironing my funkiest black Japanese designer shirt and pants. And then I remembered a recent article by Deljarum here at MMORPGDot, which commented on a similar fixation with ironing prior to conferences. This relaxed my fears of an emergent split personality disorder and I proceeded to spend the next two hours trying to transform those valleys and mountains of drill cotton into gentle plains of black.

I don't know how much better of an impression I made on the people I met at the AGDC but one thing is certain, I definitely missed out on the whole card trading game. Word of advice: if you're going to a big conference or gathering and don't want to feel like an elf at a rally of the local Dwarven Beard Trimming Guild do yourself a favour and print out a few cards. Even if it's just a simple name, number and address - play the card game. Even if you don't want to make an impression on anyone, play the card game. Why? Because you get this half disgusted, half demeaning look from people who ask "can I have your card?", that just puts you one down in the exchange that follows.

More importantly, it's hard to actually realise how easy it is to approach the big players in the industry. You have a thorny WoW question? Track down Rob Pardo or Chris Metzen from Blizzard at the local expo and let it fly. I was surprised at how friendly and down to earth most people at the conference were. And let's face it; you don't get to converse with people that make the games you love on a daily basis. I don't know if this is a unique aspect of the AGDC, but the impressive line-up of key note speakers and industry people milling in the crowd welcomed everyone with open arms, whether they were students scoping out openings in the industry, an established employee working for an existing company or game academics looking to enrich their understanding of the field.

Sadly enough, I only met one other academic at the conference and it seems strange (at least to me, as a PhD researcher), that game academics wouldn't attend the one event in the continent that brought the creators of our objects of study within easy reach. It isn't surprising then, that there was a general sense of ambivalence from the industry side towards game academics. The sad part of all this is that one side's work could feed so fruitfully into the other's thinking which would in turn contribute to the practical work in the shape of alternate conceptual strategies. But enough general banter - let's zoom in on the actual event.

This year the Australian Games Developers Conference was held at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square, Melbourne. Aside from its striking architecture, the Federation Square buildings have the added bonus of managing to confuse the living hell out of visitors. It feels like you're constantly stepping on teleporter pads that screw up your sense of direction. Melbourne is really a great city with a lot to offer to the casual visitor. It is one of the most multi-cultural places I've been in with a warm, if somewhat fickle climate that has a killer night life to suit all tastes, a nice beach and stacks of cafés that seem to be populated till the early hours on a regular basis (I was out till 4am on a Monday at a bar in St Kilda and its was still full and rocking!).

Ok, so enough random rambling. Here's a run down of the major points made by the keynotes:

Needless to say, this was a room-filler. Rob gave an interesting talk on how to create AAA games. What struck me most about his talk was his emphasis on re-thinking the importance of innovation. He stressed that although innovation is important, what really sells is execution. Putting your spin on an existing tried and tested idea can be more rewarding (sales wise) than wrecking your brains on doing something different if the game you produce is polished enough and delivered to market in its best possible incarnation. Another area that Pardo stressed was pacing: games need to hook players in at an early stage and make sure that the excitement and rewards keep rolling in on a regular basis. Here I couldn't help but ask Rob how he felt about World of Warcraft's pacing at the end game and he readily answered: "The pacing after level 60 sucks". He explained that this was basically an unresolved problem where the team opted to have better pacing at the earlier levels and work on the end game at a later stage, which is what they are trying to address at the moment. I also asked Rob if he thought a level structure was essential to an MMOG. His answer considered both sides of the coin but leaned heavily on the level oriented design. A designer could do away with levels and still make a successful MMOG, or at least one type of MMOG, but the level structure gives a very important reward system that is critical to a game's success. Levels, according to Pardo, gives you "a real understanding of who you are and where you are at within the game structure. It gives you something that lets you compare yourself to other people. There is a lot of value in the level system that you would be losing if you went with something else…" A fair answer if ever there was one, and most importantly it's consistent with Rob's emphasis on execution over innovation. "Take a tried and tested idea and put your spin on it." Blizzard has demonstrated that this is definitely where the money is. Sucks for those of us who are starving for something more intelligent and appealing than the level-carrot hamster wheel!

Livingstone gave a very interesting history of his involvement in games going from founding Games Workshop, publishing D&D, writing the popular Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books with Steve Jackson and then moving into computer games including his involvement with the massively successful Tomb Raider series. The main message that came out of the pen and paper game era was: "If you believe in something, work towards it against all odds, no matter how many people advise you against it".

The second part of the talk gave a very interesting perspective on top selling games from a publisher's point of view. The major two points here were: "Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay" and "Own your Intellectual Property". He stressed the need to focus on interesting and appealing gameplay above high-end graphics and technology. But the main stress of the speech was on Intellectual Property. This is where the money is. Creating interesting intellectual property is sowing the seed for a potential financial success. He explained how the Lara Croft IP generated a total of $1.5 billion. He ended the speech by appealing for developers to swim upstream; be different. Unlike Rob Pardo, he views innovation as a crucial factor in creating successful games.

I later conducted a personal interview with Mr Livingstone, which will be published soon on MMORPGDot.

Greg gave a series of invaluable tips to pursuing the thorny path of the independent game developer. An important aspect to Pandemic's success was creating their own technology and making it reusable for future games. He divides Pandemic's history in three phases. In the first frantic phase they worked on getting things going and securing whatever titles they could. The second and crucial phase involved building their reputation. The key point here was to demonstrate to publishers that they can deliver a good product on time, as well as taking up projects which they might not have been too enthusiastic about, yet were essential in solidifying their relationships with leading publishers. The third and current stage focused on execution.

Greg stressed the importance to keep their employees happy and organize regular activities for their employees. They even have a full time person employed to organise staff activities. The party man/woman. How's that for a career path? An important aspect of making successful games and surviving as an independent developer is, once again, owning the intellectual property, which is not an easy thing to secure in a deal with publishers.

Pandemic has recently teamed up with Bioware and Elevation. Elevation is a private equity group (that includes Bono from U2!) that finances projects that developers would like to work on without going to a publisher and getting bound by publisher's interests. If a developer finances the majority of a project, they have far more leverage with publishers to decide the nature of the content, retain their IP and make sure they have enough time to ship a ready product. By separating the bank from the publisher through self or private financing Bioware Pandemic plans on making more innovative titles (praise the great mushroom in the sky) that benefit the strengths of both companies: the RPG and community management that Bioware bring to the table and the open ended worlds that Pandemic specialise in.

Let's face it, compared to Europe, North America and a good portion of Asia, Australia and New Zealand are not the richest areas in terms of game-related industrial and academic events. The AGDC is a unique opportunity for those of us involved in the gaming world to have a face to face chat with the movers and shakers of the world market. The entrance fees weigh in at a heavy $330 for students and $770 for non-students, which is rather unfortunate seeing as these events are only as strong as the crowds that attend them and in that respect the AGDC's attendance was somewhat underwhelming, yet understandably so. Even at a reduced $330, how many students can afford to invest a few weeks of rent in a single event?

John De Margheriti, the founder of the Australian Game Developers Conference announced that this would be the last edition of the AGDC as we know it. Next year the conference will be run on a different model administered by the Game Developers Association of Australia. The only information we were given regarding the different model was that the entrance fees would be lowered. It would be great to see an event that features such an impressive line-up of speakers that would be more financially accessible and hopefully more populated. To all those who wanted to attend but didn't manage I have one thing to say: Whether you are in the industry, wanting to scout a possible entry point into it or are approaching games from an academic setting, conferences like the AGDC are indispensable. From my experience, I got far more out of it than I had imagined before I flew to Melbourne. One parting comment: It would be really great to have a chance to actually play with/against other delegates and speakers! Previous years featured a hugely popular LAN party. My final request is: BRING IT BACK!