The quality of the talks so far has been excellent.
Highlights include keynotes by Ian Livingstone from Game Workshop, White Dwarf & Eidos on the value of intellectual property, Greg Borrud and Dr Ray Muzyka from Bioware/Pandemic with a keynote each talking about the challenges facing independent developers, Chris Metzen from Blizzard talking about the design of the Worldcraft world from Warcraft 1,2,3 up to the World of Warcraft, a delightful talk by Machiko Kusahara on Games as art and entertainment in Japan, and Brendan McNamara’s talk on using actors in video games.
Each of these talks were brilliant and deserving of their own post so I will expand on them shortly.
For now some general observations about AGDC and the game industry in Australia as it exists right now.
NextGen is dominating the conference. Lips are tight and the programming track is bare. Techniques are either already done or so secret at this point so there seems to be little that people are willing or able to share. This is understandable given the transition period that we are currently in but it makes for quite an “interesting” tone when catching up with old workmates and literally not being able to say anything at all about the project you are currently working on.
Quite a contrast to the last time I attended AGDC in 2004.
At that time I was between working for Irrational Games and Team Bondi, I was beholden to nobody, and was attending the conference as a speaker giving a programming talk called Zen of Networked Physics. I shared my knowledge freely with everyone I met and enjoyed the experience immensely. This time I cannot even hint at what I am actually working on, aside from saying that I am Senior Gameplay Programmer at Team Bondi and we are working on “L.A. Noire”, a detective thriller for Playstation 3.
Yet the opportunity that we have at Team Bondi, to work on an original IP for a nextgen console, is the “holy grail” for game development at this point and certainly something for which I am very grateful.