30 Quotes From GDC 06

Next Generation has a piece with 30 notable quotes from last week's GDC conference. From the article: "Mitch Lasky, Senior VP of mobile EA - 'There are too many bad games. The fact is, most games suck. It's the greatest danger to the future of this business. There's a real danger of an Atari 2600 episode here, given the oversupply of poor quality content, followed by consumers abandoning the platform.'"

Comments

People Unclear on the Concept

[SPrintF]

too many people see mobile phones primarily as communication devices

Phone == communication device. What part of this is unclear?

Re:People Unclear on the Concept

[Qzukk]

What part of this is unclear?

The part that lets companies grab at your wallet every chance they get.

EA Quote

[eviloverlordx]

Neil Young
General manager
EA L.A.
"One new feature or fresh take can change everything."

This from Electronic Arts?

Favorite bug quote...

[__aaclcg7560]

When I was working on Backyard Baseball (GameCube) for Atari, I got this comment from a programmer in one of the bug reports: "I don't know what the problem is, but whatever it was it's now fixed."

I was going to ask him to step through the code to find out exactly what the problem was to be absolutely sure that it was fixed, but I didn't want to risk breaking anything else because of that. Bad enough they waited until the last build to remove the animation of one of the kids flipping off the pitcher when striking out and remove all the background phallic imagery. It was a children's game, btw.

To me the big comment was about casual gamers

[WillAffleckUW]

that casual gamers are the real market/universe, and that hardcore gamers are only a small subset of that.

That, to me, is the lesson of Nintendogs.

When the gaming industry wakes up to that one is when games explode into life.

Re:We do not run from risk

[cgenman]

To be fair, Nintendo had the first online console, the the first handheld portable game system, the first re-writable optical drive in a console. They had the first (and only) all-red dual-eye parallax game console, the first battery backed-up cartridge, the first scrolling arcade game. They had the first shoulder buttons, the first analog stick (on a major system), the first rumble pack, the first diamond configuration buttons. They had the first analog buttons that click when you hold them all the way down. They had the second handheld to system link feature, the first utterly gratuitous plate-spinning robot, the first sewing machine attachment. They had some of the the first portable single-title LCD games. They had the first 3rd person / 1st person hybrid shooter, the first action floor mat, the first touch-screen portable gaming system. The first (by a few days) portable gaming system with built-in wifi.

All of the things that you list as Nintendo shying away from are actually things which everyone else in the industry considered the safe bet. When everyone was going to CD, Nintendo took a risk and stuck with the access times of cartridges. 10 years ago when everyone said that online console gaming was now, Nintendo correctly said that the time was not yet right.

With Pokemon, Virtua Boy, Nintendogs, Kirby, Brain Games, Bulky Drive, etc, it is hard to fault their originality. Nintendo routinely does really bafflingly odd things.

Product Placement in games quote:

[Lave]

John Epstein Double Fusion - "TV advertising is increasingly viewed with concern because of commercial skipping and lack of engagement. Games are the most powerful advertising medium that exists today." TFA links to an article within which he says:

"Don't tell me you'd stop playing Grand Theft Auto if you saw a Gap ad instead of some generic fake brand."

Yes I would. GTA has satirical adverts. They criticise the media, the insulting way they treat the public, and make an good social comment which improve the game no end. This is what sets it apart from EA rip offs.

We've enjoyed a medium near enough free from advertising. And it is our duty to preserve this. If I pay £40 (and next gen £50) to buy a game, I buy the freedom from ads. You can put them in, but then you must make the game free. There is no middle ground. An XBOX 360 game full of ads won't cost less than some fantasy game that doesn't have them. If you think it will, I am sorry but you are fooling yourself. All it does is succeed in making genres that are not "advertising friendly" less financially viable.

Just because american TV lost the battle to product placement (as the UK might, if the EU stops product placement being illegal), that doesn't mean it's ok for games to lose too. Because this is what this is - Product Placement.

And most importantly, I think it's fair to say most people who play games on slashdot want games to be seen as art. Want them to be acknowledged as a new , creative and meaningful media. And how can that happen if the people making the game have no fucking respect for their own creations.

To quote the late, great, Bill Hicks:

"Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink." - Bill Hicks