Noel

Independent game designer and programmer. Created Subterfuge, Casey's Contraptions, Flower Garden. Runner. Cyclist. Nature enthusiast. Magic addict. @noel_llopis.

2004 GameTech Report: Game Tech Leadership Summit

The GameTech Leadership Summit was the second part of this year’s Game Tech Seminars. Underneath a somewhat confusing name, it really was an analysis of the tools and technology in games today.

The first day is where the real meat of this second part was. It was a postmortem/analysis of the tech involved in some of the most successful games today (Halo 2, Half Life 2, The Sims 2, and Stranger) done by the tech lead (or someone close to that position) for each of the teams. Each of the talks was packed with information and some of them are freely available online, so I’m not even going to try to summarize the talks. Instead, this is going to be more of a highlight of things that caught my eye or I thought were particularly important.

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2004 GameTech Report: Creating Believable Characters

They say good things come in small packages. That was certainly true of this year’s Game Tech Seminars. It was a four-day intensive conference dealing with very specific topics (realistic characters and engine/tools technology) with a very impressive list of speakers. The best part though, was the attendees. There were only about 80 people total in the conference (due in no small part to the hefty price tag attached to the conference, I’m sure), and they were mostly tech leads or directors of technology of their companies. It was great to see lots of familiar faces, but also a lot of new ones I only knew through the Internet or not at all before. The great discussions following each session, or even over lunch or dinner were worth the price of admission alone.

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All Work No Play, Makes Jack a Dull Game Developer (Part 2)

“Wanted: Young, skinny, wirey fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week.” Pony Express advertisement, 1860.

That would be a funny anachronism if it weren’t still so true. OK, so game companies are not asking potential candidates to risk death every day, but they surely are asking them to give up their lives to the company.

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All Work No Play, Makes Jack a Dull Game Developer (Part 1)

This article has been a long time coming. It should be abundantly clear from past articles I’ve written (and from my rants if you know me in person) that I feel very strongly about quality of life issues in the games industry. It pains me to see rampant overtime be commonplace, and the truly ironic part is, I’m convinced it doesn’t help the final game any. As a matter of fact, it probably makes people be less productive and makes the game suffer for it. Ah, but they crunched some impressive hours. They have something they can feel proud of.

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