Attendance Hits 19,000

Non-Traditional Games Take Center Stage at GDC

March 8, 2011 by Jeff Berman|Top News

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Social & Online Games Summit, as well as the first GDC Smartphone Summit, were relegated to the first two days of last week’s Game Developers Conference, but those and other non-traditional games had a strong presence throughout the conference. Nintendo’s keynote was one of the few parts of GDC in which traditional console and handheld games took center stage, and even there the main news turned out to be Netflix movie streams coming to the 3DS portable game system this summer (CED March 3 p1).

Most members of the game development community seem to be coming to terms with the growing popularity of social games, Director Meggan Scavio told us at GDC Friday. At last year’s GDC, “there was sort of a push and pull between the traditional game makers and the social game makers,” she said. “That doesn’t seem to exist this year. Everyone is much more accepting” of social games now, she said. One reason why that’s likely happened is that “a lot of traditional game makers are moving to the social space now,” she said. Social games, as a result, are gaining more “credibility,” she said.

A challenge facing social game companies is figuring out how to compete against Zynga. Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello last week estimated that his company’s rival had an 80 percent market share in social gaming (CED March 3 p8). Zynga Chief Game Designer Brian Reynolds declined to confirm if that was true, but said EA, Disney’s Playdom and Digital Chocolate were fighting it out for a distant No. 2 (CED March 4 p3).

There were probably about the same number of game companies looking to hire people at last week’s GDC as at the 2010 GDC, Scavio said. But Zynga, in particular, “seems to be hiring a lot more this year,” she said, though it didn’t have a booth at GDC’s Career Pavilion on the exhibit floor. Various other companies were recruiting there last week, including Activision’s Blizzard Entertainment division, Disney, Gameloft and Warner Brothers Games. The latter said it was “actively recruiting for various positions in engineering, art, production” and design at its Chicago and Seattle studios.

GDC organizer UBM TechWeb Game Network, meanwhile, said GDC attendance grew to “a record 19,000 game industry professionals” last week, up 5.6 percent from a year ago. Scavio told us ahead of GDC that she expected attendance to be up from 2010, although she wasn’t sure by how much (CED Feb 24 p6). She told us Friday that the exhibit floor was “packed,” and “there was just a really good feeling in the air” among attendees.

There were fewer attendees who weren’t able to get into conference sessions they wanted to last week than last year due to the extra space used for this year’s GDC, Scavio said. GDC was held in all three buildings of the Moscone Center last week after just being held in the north and south buildings last year. “We are attempting to” have space in at least part of all three buildings again next year, Scavio said. She said another conference is scheduled for the south hall next year when GDC is to be held, March 5-9. Scavio said her company is trying to get at least some space in the south hall next year because without that “it’s going to be tight."

The iPad 2 that was unveiled by Apple at a news conference held next door to the Moscone Center within minutes of Nintendo’s GDC keynote on Wednesday didn’t divert that much media attention away from GDC, Scavio said. “We program” GDC “for the developers not the press anyway,” she said. Scavio told us she didn’t think Apple was trying to one-up Nintendo and GDC in opting to hold its news briefing when and where it did. “I think Apple” was just looking to run its event alongside GDC, she said: GDC’s organizer has “been in talks with Apple” and is “trying” to convince the company to take part in a future GDC for the first time. “I would love to,” in particular, have an Apple iOS game seminar within GDC, similar to what’s been done with other platforms, she said.

Game Developers Conference Notebook

Lockwood Publishing is “happy concentrating” on developing games and other content for spaces on Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation Home virtual social game network, CEO Halli Bjornsson told us. It’s not looking to design content for other platforms, he said. The company was started in 2005, but “took off” about three years ago, when it started developing for Home, he said. Lockwood has designed about 50 Home projects to date, including the mini massively multiplayer online game Sodium One, launched about a year ago, and its sequel, Sodium 2: Project Velocity, launching this spring, he said. Sodium was the first major Home game that the company made and took about 10 months to complete, he said. Lockwood shares revenue with the companies who hire it to design Home content and virtual spaces, he said. About 60 people work at the company and it’s looking to hire more people, Studio Manager Steve Riding said, but didn’t specify how many.

KartRider Rush is Nexon America’s first game for Android smartphones, a company spokeswoman said. The title will launch this month for Apple iOS devices and will be released for Android devices in “the latter half of 2011,” she said. Nexon America said it will be a summer launch. Nexon already released two titles for iOS: MapleStory Thief Edition and Dino Singers. But KartRider Rush is the first that’s been published by Nexon America, she said. The first two were published by Nexon Mobile, she said. Also coming from Nexon America this summer, it said, will be MapleStory Adventures for Facebook. Nexon America CEO Daniel Kim called the expansion of his company’s games to the social and mobile gaming arenas “a watershed moment in Nexon’s global expansion efforts.”

Designers of the game Octodad were pleased to see Microsoft executives “change their tune” about independent game companies developing titles that make use of the Kinect motion sensor, they told us. Software engineer Brian O'Donnell and game programmer and designer Shervin Hossein demonstrated the PC adventure game they developed at DePaul University, where they are students. “Full-scale” development started on the game in July by a team of 18 people, and it took about two months to add Kinect compatibility to the version that was shown at GDC, they said. “The implementation” of Kinect into the game “wasn’t all that difficult,” said O'Donnell, the game’s lead programmer. Microsoft said last month it will release a non-commercial Kinect for Windows software development kit from its Microsoft Research division this spring (CED Feb 23 p12). The goal of the “starter kit” for application developers was “to make it easier for academic research and enthusiast communities to create even richer experiences using Kinect technology,” it said. The sensor is now used only with Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360.