GDC Online 2010

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Stuffed a few GDC Online articles into existing threads, but some just won't fit...

GDC Online: Battle.net's Canessa - Building Gaming Networks Is Harder Than You Think
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/3086..._Gaming_Networks_Is_Harder_Than_You_Think.php

In a postmortem for Blizzard's Battle.net at Austin's GDC Online today, project director Greg Canessa warned developers about underestimating the difficulty of creating an integrated online gaming network.

"It's really hard designing and building this stuff," said Canessa, who was also a key leader in the development of Xbox Live at Microsoft. He said it's a "common and frequent" misconception that developing an integrated online gaming network is an easy task. "Design iteration is just as important here as it is with game titles," he said.

The new version of Battle.net launched alongside July's release of StarCraft II, which is tightly woven into the Battle.net system. Canessa revealed that Blizzard had been developing and iterating on the network since 2007, making changes right up to StarCraft II's launch. "Build enough time into your schedule to iterate on these services," he advised.

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EDIT:
GDC Online: Brian Reynolds' Wild West In Social Design
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30848/GDC_Online_Brian_Reynolds_Wild_West_In_Social_Design.php

Reynolds hoped to figure out ways to make games "more social than they had been," and to use design skill to weave key lessons from Zynga's other successes into a new title. "We weren't trying to launch out in a radical new direction," he points out.

For example, hoping to make the "visiting behavior" that helped popularize FarmVille more social, one of the first things Reynolds wanted to do was give players the ability to click on anything on a neighbor's homestead. This represented an expansion on the far fewer options that FarmVille allowed.

And in FrontierVille, the environment pushes back, requiring players to clear and explore it -- something that "goes back to a classic game design pattern that [was part of] a lot of the games that I worked on," he explains. Refining the environment and receiving a reward for it is part of the Civilization games, for example.

But are these the elements that make FrontierVille fun? Reynolds says that the "Sid Meier school of game design" says that designers have to build, prototype and experience a design to find the fun -- it can't all be conceived on paper.

 

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GDC Online: Koster Shares Lessons Learned In Social Game Design
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...res_Lessons_Learned_In_Social_Game_Design.php

At a GDC Online talk in Austin today, Raph Koster, VP of creative design at Disney-owned social game developer Playdom (Sorority Life), challenged myths about the social game audience and gave triple-A developers tips on making the leap from big-budget packaged games to social game development.

"The biggest thing involved in making this shift, making this leap is mental adjustments," Koster said, adding that to go into social gaming, you have to be more than just a "bad-ass game developer."

Filling in at the session for scheduled speaker and co-founder of Playdom subsidiary Metaplace John Donham, Koster offered a series of tips to help with those important mental adjustments:

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Related article on social games impact on casuals:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-09-30/mafia-wars-and-the-moms-who-play-it/

A surprising new group is addicted to the popular social game Mafia Wars. Brian Ries talks to moms who spend their days taking care of their children—and robbing drug dealers.

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The average social gamer is a 43-year old woman. But the vast majority of these women flock to the plethora of maternally oriented social-network games like FarmVille (grow a farm!), FrontierVille (pioneer a town!), and Café World (run a café!). The moms playing Mafia Wars, on the other hand, are scaring off thugs, robbing drug dealers, collecting protection money—and earning piles of cash.

Mafia Wars, built by Zynga on Facebook, has grown like wildfire since being introduced in August 2008. The text-based game now claims upward of five million daily players, who are generating an estimated 21,218,834 monthly active uniques as they register over one billion player-vs.-player actions, 30 million tournament matches, 600 million fights, and 300 million robberies.

Dona Keefe, the mom from Indianapolis, is all-too-familiar with this during-school, after-dinner, full-time gangster business. She says it was her boyfriend who first got her hooked, admitting he’s "worse than me," before cheerily adding, "It's his fault!"

During the peak of her time running with the mafia, Keefe would check in up to 10 times a day—both from work, where she sat at a computer with Internet access “all day long,” and from the relative sanctity of her home, hours after her two youngest, aged 8 and 10, had gone off to bed.

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Ha ha, all the GDC Online articles here:

GDC Online 2010: The Complete Coverage So Far:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/30825/GDC_Online_2010_The_Complete_Coverage_So_Far.php

There are about 20-30 articles...

Gamasutra is in Austin, Texas all this week covering GDC Online, with a host of lectures on online games, iPhone/iPad and related product announcements already written up for the website - here's all the stories posted so far. [UPDATE: session, product stories updated on Thursday, October 7th.]

The Austin, Texas based conference -- formerly known as GDC Austin -- is sharply focused on the development of online games, and there are now more than 120 panels, lectures and tutorials taking place during the October 5th-8th event, with almost 90 companies on the show floor.

The highlights of content at GDC Online thus far, written up by Gamasutra editors from session coverage and official releases, include:

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More…

GDC Online: MMO Devs Need To Remind Customers What They're Paying For:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/3087...o_Remind_Customers_What_Theyre_Paying_For.php

GDC Online: Bigpoint's Hubertz On Why Europe Matters
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/30875/GDC_Online_Bigpoints_Hubertz_On_Why_Europe_Matters.php

GDC Online: Turbine Claims Double Revenues For F2P Lord Of The Rings Online
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/3087...Revenues_For_F2P_Lord_Of_The_Rings_Online.php

GDC Online: Bartle On MUD's 'Soul', Design 'Must Want To Say Something'
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...Ds_Soul_Design_Must_Want_To_Say_Something.php

EDIT:
'kay, Gamasutra updated its Complete Coverage page to include all the Friday presentations:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/30825/GDC_Online_2010_The_Complete_Coverage_So_Far.php

 

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GDC Online: Koster Shares Lessons Learned In Social Game Design
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...res_Lessons_Learned_In_Social_Game_Design.php

GAF has a thread on this presentation:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco2010/socialmechanics.pdf

162 slides, including one that says:

The core 40 mechanics of multiplayer games.

• Yes, all of them.
• No further design required -- ever.*