I get at least two or three emails a week from folks curious about the texts that I use in classes or what I’m reading at the moment. So the new approach is to place all of those items in that sidebar. There are a bunch in there already, but only 3 at a time display. I’m sure there are a bunch of different texts that I’m not thinking to add at the moment, but I’m at the home office without my library and I’m not prepared to start adding willy nilly from my reference manager.
If I were a little more proactive I’d probably put my $0.02 in on each text, but I’m busy at the moment slogging through pulling all the bits and pieces together on what will hopefully be my own addition to that little sidebar. I’m at about 50% completion on the book at the moment. The other 50% is partially complete as well, but needs a good amount of integration and smoothing into a more cohesive whole, which is what I believe I’ve done with the first half of the text. The other thing I’ve done is really separate out the more historical elements and focus on the ethnographic. That isn’t to say there isn’t a historical bent, particularly in the industry chapters and as I get into development tools, but it is quite different from the dissertation.
So, I know running emulators on your devices is fun, but is precisely the thing that brings the ire of console makers. http://bit.ly/3hr6VA [caseyodonnell]
"Developers in the Mist" manuscript 1/4 complete. Pieces falling into places, reminds me of Super Mario Bros. Oh wait, that’s the structure. [caseyodonnell]
I knew I had some additional thoughts to share post-SIEGE, but they hadn’t all percolated up yet. Nor have I had the chance to sit back and record a video of the Unity 3D demo that I did. That should be coming soon. But not yet. In the mean time, Jason Della Rocca wrote up a nice post and in usual form uploaded some photos. It was nice to see Jason again at the event, making it feel a bit more like the game industry center rather than the periphery. Georgia and Atlanta have come a long way in the last year. Even Athens has a couple of fledgling businesses attempting to get things going. Furthermore, I suspect that Osy and all the work that has been going on with recent efforts at UGA may be spun off, so all in all, things seem good, despite the economic situation.
Jason’s talk, as he says in his post, focused on 10 things that don’t suck:
For my keynote, I gave an updated version of my “10 things that don’t suck” presentation. Also, did a more niche panel on economic development type stuff, and a separate lecture on failure as the path to success/innovation.
The list I walked away with was as follows:
New Interfaces
New Players and Broadening Demographics
Usability Metrics and Metrics in General
Closer Ties to Academia and Growth of Game Studies
Production Sophistication with Agile Development and Scrum
Progress in QoL
Tools and “Democratization”
Managing Risk with Real-Time Management and Release Early/Often Models
Shifting Innovation “S” Curves
Impact – Games for Change and Serious Games
Now, of course I have to convince Jason that though my PhD says “Science and Technology Studies,” I am one of those Dr. people who “do games.” It may not say game studies, but I wrote my dissertation about work and creative practice in the game industry. Of course I don’t have any snazzy photos of me and Warren Spector, so that may ultimately be my problem. But maybe that makes sense, instead you’ll find pictures of me like this one, hanging out with developers rather than the folks at the top:
GDC 2007 Photo Jog
All-in-all, the event was a delight, save one presentation that simply rubbed me the wrong way. Typically I’m not one to get up and leave a presentation, but I was frustrated enough ten minutes into the talk that I decided having my blood pressure elevated for another 50 minutes was simply not something I was interested in. Upon returning to my notes I realized that what ticked me off was a definition of “risk” that doesn’t include human time/labor as having value (“The square root of bugger-all” to be precise). Tell that to MMOs attempting to battle World of Warcraft for the time of users. Sorry. No cookie.
There was a significant call for “internship” opportunities by students present at the end of the weekend town hall meeting. I’m actually not sure that the different definitions of “internship” are the same for what students are asking for and what industry is hearing. What many of the students seem to be asking for are unpaid internships for credit to gain experience. What industry typically has are paid internships for in-school or just-out-of-school folks hoping to demonstrate and hone skills prior to entering the workforce. There is also a significant difference in these two definitions in terms of time over head (there it is again, time, sheesh!) on the part of the internship offering company as well as expected output from the intern. What may very well be the “answer” for this is to create a kind of incubation/training system where students can work with other independent developers for free/credit, rather than asking/hoping the local industry do something time demanding and different than what they have become used to. Several times I heard students say when asked about a reel or portfolio, that they simply “don’t have time.” Make time. I did. Party less. Get lower grades. Do something different, because I don’t accept that answer. I see what you do on the weekends and weeknights. I have visited the bars and I know your WoW avatar names.
Perhaps the coolest part (besides the parties, which in GDC style were “off the hook”) was that The University of Georgia was graciously provided a space at the job and education hall for having rounded up so many attendees. Having never done this before, and not really asked permission, things were a bit sparse, but I feel we did well with a budget of $0.00 and the impressive efforts of folks like Josh Marsh who posted our running trailer, available for your viewing pleasure here:
Well… I may not have posted much around here recently, but I’ve actually been writing all over the place. Mostly recently I posted two essays over at Game Design Aspect of the Month after the excellent Mark “Danger” Chen suggested that I might be a nice match for the August blogging topic. That particular topic centered around “game design” infused game development. There ended up being two essays that I managed to complete, but there is a third that is still rattling around in my head. The first, “The Console, Debug Menu, and Gaming Development,” is a first shot of thinking historically about the rise of more interactive tools for game developers. The second, “The Rise of the Technical Artist and Tools Engineer,” is more contemporary, looking at the recent ascendancy of the sub-disciplines of Tools Engineer and Technical artist. Each is one part of a broader question I’ve had with regard to “interactive” videogame development. Neither displays my usual critical stance and was instead intended to be informative. Of course, they each feed into broader conversations and thinking I’ve been doing with regard to tools and tool development.
A couple of weeks ago now I finished and finally posted a long running examination of several prototyping tools that I’d been investigating for various classes and personal use. The real punchline is somewhat hidden in the middle there (“Bad Casey!”):
Ultimately, what I found interesting about each engine was its approach to pipelines. Getting art assets and design data into an engine becomes the crucial component. Image libraries, text file parsing, and supported scripting languages quickly become the focus for engineering problems on these engines. All except AngelXNA that is. The real plusses and minuses for each engine seem to come down to file support, preferences toward coding conventions, and supported platforms. While AngelXNA is great for prototyping and does an excellent job of using XNA’s asset pipelines, it creates Windows only binaries, and while it may allow you to prototype on your Xbox, taking it other platforms will provide not an insignificant amount of work.
Now I just need to determine how all of this additional writing fits into all of my other academic activities.
