Phil Harrison's GDC keynote - Home, LittleBigPlanet & more

[Dave Baumann]

Doubling res is a sizable performance hit in most next-gen games, I would guess. Any sample of size one may not reflect that, of course.

It depend on the title and the type of workloads that it demands - none of these consoles are going to have trouble rendering the likes of, say, Quake 3 at the maximum resolutions as its primarily just taxing texture and pixel bandwidth and they both have more than enough capabilities here not to have too much trouble.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I think we can agree though, that a next gen title should have considerably more features then Quake3, including dynamic lighting and shadows, complex shaders with normal mapping, and of cours emore textures, geometry, and overdraw...

 

[mrcorbo]

Somebody, please break into that demo unit and replace RR7 with F1 or MotorStorm. For the love of humanity!

 

[Inane_Dork]

Nevermind then, I thought we were still discussing RR7 on PS3 at 1080p.

Apparently everyone was but me. *smacks head*

RR7 at 1080p is not too interesting, though. It's clearly lacking in several graphical areas. Motorstorm trounces it in every category but two: res and framerate. That ought to say something. If you're fine with RR7 quality, 1080p at 60 fps is possible. If you want something that looks as good as Motorstorm, something's got to give.


Dave: Yes, that's just a restatement of my "sample of size one" point. Any one game may not fit the criteria, including but not limited to Quake 3.

 

[Arwin]

Apparently everyone was but me. *smacks head*

RR7 at 1080p is not too interesting, though. It's clearly lacking in several graphical areas. Motorstorm trounces it in every category but two: res and framerate. That ought to say something. If you're fine with RR7 quality, 1080p at 60 fps is possible. If you want something that looks as good as Motorstorm, something's got to give.

Of course, there is still GT:HD ...

I agree that 1080p isn't always the best option. But the choice is there and it will be intereting to see what turns out to be the resolution of choice for each individual title.

Oh and I agree. There could be better demoes for that demo unit. The F1 season just started, the bi-annual car-show in Amsterdam will be at the end of this month (i.e. use GT:HD ), Motorstorm looks great, etc. Also, they need to show off BluRay.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Isn't DMC4 xplatform?

No DMC4 is not multi-platform.

*ahem*

 

[mckmas8808]

*ahem*

Hey like The Boss says in Metal Gear Solid 3, "the times change".

 

[patsu]

David Karraker's GDC interview: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?r=1&id=17943&type=mov

It has close up screens of LBP's community interface (which I missed earlier), plus other comments on Home (and KZ).

 

[Gradthrawn]

Another Phil, post GDC, interview. Covers LBP and Home. Not much new, but some interesting tidbits, nonetheless:

Q: In terms of some of the actions you can do within the world, presumably there’s no adult content there?

PH: Well, it’s absolutely deliberate that there is no physical impact between characters, between avatars. We are going to have animations that will allow you to shake somebody’s hand or to have some social touch but in a very, you know, appropriate way. But no, we’re not going to have ‘those’ kind of animations that I’m imagining that you’re thinking about.

Q: What about uploading porn from your PS3’s hard-disk to your private space? And maybe inviting people you don’t necessarily know back and them being slightly offended by what they see, then going to a moderator?

PH: Well I’m disappointed that you would use those as the first questions. I think Home should be used for a much wider and more beneficial scope than that, but I think that people can express their creativity inside Home in a wide variety of ways and it’s not necessarily for us to dictate what that should be. However, if somebody feels uncomfortable about an encounter on Home, it’s very easy for them to ban that person from their friends list…

Q: In terms of the virtual cinema, you talked a lot about trailers, that kind of thing, will you be showing full films in there?

PH: No. The best place to show a film is running off the Cross Media Bar. But short clip content yes, user-created content definitely and possibly news and daily programming.

Q: But no TV shows?

PH: I wouldn’t say no TV shows, but I don’t think you would want to stand there for an hour watching a TV show when the best way is to watch it from the Cross Media Bar.

Q: But I assume that’ll be linked, if the film is available, on the online store, then there’ll be a one-click buy?

PH: That’s exactly the intention. You would be able to preview something in the preview theatre and then link to the store to be able to download it, exactly right.

Q: Will there be incentives for users to run adverts in their private apartments, like ‘run this ad, show it to your mates and we’ll give you something,’ say?

PH: We haven’t considered that, but it’s an interesting thought. In the last 48 hours since we’ve shared Home with the world, every time I sit down with somebody to have a discussion like this, the list of ideas gets longer and longer and longer, which is fantastic. That’s what resonates with me so strongly, the fact that we’ve got something here which has sparked everybody’s imagination.

Q: We were discussing outside the prospect of getting bigger apartments in Home and A) how much that might cost and B) whether you’d be able to get an extension to your apartment if you get a certain number of trophies, or something like that. Have you been thinking along those sorts of lines?

PH: Yeah, once again we’re not talking specifically at this moment but I’ll give you a general flavour of what we’re going to do, so here we’ve got a patio, but why not have a bigger patio, why not have a patio with a dock that goes down to the lake, and why not have…

Q: A Sunseeker?

PH: Yeah, or rather than an alpine mountain scene, why not have a desert island? There are lots of different ways that we can extend that; users will be able to extend their visual experience to customise their apartment through buying items from the store, by being given items through playing PlayStation 3 disk-based games or through items that we ourselves donate into the community.

Q: What’s the reward system going to be — what will you get if you make the number one played level?

PH: We’ve got some interesting ideas on that which we’ll share a little bit later, but we hope that star creators will be recognised and rewarded for their efforts.

 

[mckmas8808]

I like the new interviews.

 

[Sis]

I like the new interviews.

I hope he's put more thought into online moderation then this quote would have you believe:

Q: What about uploading porn from your PS3’s hard-disk to your private space? And maybe inviting people you don’t necessarily know back and them being slightly offended by what they see, then going to a moderator?

PH: Well I’m disappointed that you would use those as the first questions. I think Home should be used for a much wider and more beneficial scope than that, but I think that people can express their creativity inside Home in a wide variety of ways and it’s not necessarily for us to dictate what that should be. However, if somebody feels uncomfortable about an encounter on Home, it’s very easy for them to ban that person from their friends list…

They have a fairly large issue to deal with, especially with regards to protecting minors and protecting people from griefers. Saying "I'm disappointed in you" is not the right mind set; instead, it should be: "what are the biggest assholes in the world going to do in our HOME product, day in and day out, and how do we stop them"? Having people self-moderate (banning from friends list) will only go so far.

Add to it that you don't pay for HOME and there's no financial disencentive--short of banning a console, which has it's own issues--and you have a real problem to deal with. Some of the worst things on Xbox Live are kids with weekend trial cards; it brings out the griefers in large numbers...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I hope he's put more thought into online moderation then this quote would have you believe:...

What solution would you suggest? Moderation of potentially millions of people just isn't possible, especially on video content. You can test for keywords in text and even speech, but checking uploaded videos for dodgy content doesn't seem practical.

Does YouTube have any such safeguards?

 

[Bobbler]

I hope he's put more thought into online moderation then this quote would have you believe:

They have a fairly large issue to deal with, especially with regards to protecting minors and protecting people from griefers. Saying "I'm disappointed in you" is not the right mind set; instead, it should be: "what are the biggest assholes in the world going to do in our HOME product, day in and day out, and how do we stop them"? Having people self-moderate (banning from friends list) will only go so far.

Add to it that you don't pay for HOME and there's no financial disencentive--short of banning a console, which has it's own issues--and you have a real problem to deal with. Some of the worst things on Xbox Live are kids with weekend trial cards; it brings out the griefers in large numbers...

Unless I'm mistaken, he mentioned in another interview that they'd be dealing with individuals that get reported.

I'm sure they are thinking about it, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of HOME involves self moderation -- nobody can force you to watch bad things. I'd guess there'll be an option to only see people on your friends list so you don't have to deal with people you don't know already.

Self moderation in this case is quite easy to do, as there isn't any dependancy on other people to use HOME -- with a simple mute/block button that makes problematic-person-A disappear, I can't see how there would ever be an insurmountable issue that couldn't be solved by a simple squelch. Someone could report them and if their bad behavior continues they could be banned or penalized in some way. This wouldn't be like an MMO, where interaction is more or less needed for the game to survive.

 

[Sis]

What solution would you suggest? Moderation of potentially millions of people just isn't possible, especially on video content. You can test for keywords in text and even speech, but checking uploaded videos for dodgy content doesn't seem practical.

Does YouTube have any such safeguards?

They seem to; users are able to rate or mark a video as being potentially of adult content. Xbox Live has an opt-in kind of placement (you can mark the playstyle, Casual Hard Core, Underground, Family, or something like that). It's opt-in, thus completely circumventable. But, I'm sure if you grief in the Family zone you get banned, and since theirs a monetary disecentive--you're losing something you paid for--then it should work better than nothing.

Anyway, regardless of how difficult the challenge might be, they can't just hope it works itself out. I was only knocking him for his laissez-faire attitude about it...

 

[Crossbar]

Add to it that you don't pay for HOME and there's no financial disencentive--short of banning a console, which has it's own issues--and you have a real problem to deal with. .

Well, there are many ways to deal with people that missbehave, banning the apartments connected to the specific console from public display after repeated missbehaviour is one way. Three strikes and out.

Then they need to get a new console before they can go online again, that will get rather expensive in the end.

 

[Sis]

Unless I'm mistaken, he mentioned in another interview that they'd be dealing with individuals that get reported.

I've heard ambiguous remarks about it, but nothing concrete. Given that Sony's offering is more deep in the social networking side than either Nintendo's or Microsoft's, I would hope to get a little more detail about it.

 

[Bobbler]

I've heard ambiguous remarks about it, but nothing concrete. Given that Sony's offering is more deep in the social networking side than either Nintendo's or Microsoft's, I would hope to get a little more detail about it.

It's possible they aren't even quite sure yet...

I wouldn't be surprised if they were waiting for the public/private betas to really test it out -- it's kind of hard to simulate this type of thing outside of making sure mute/silence/block buttons work. With real people, they can see how bad it might get and how likely people are to deal with it themselves.

Who knows... No doubt they've thought of it, as it's one of the first thoughts that sprung to mind in thousands of people who were briefed on the idea at GDC (and certainly if they somehow didn't know before, they realize now). Even if it was self moderation only, I don't see how, in the case of Home, that would be all that bad...

 

[crazygambit]

I hope he's put more thought into online moderation then this quote would have you believe:

They have a fairly large issue to deal with, especially with regards to protecting minors and protecting people from griefers. Saying "I'm disappointed in you" is not the right mind set; instead, it should be: "what are the biggest assholes in the world going to do in our HOME product, day in and day out, and how do we stop them"? Having people self-moderate (banning from friends list) will only go so far.

Add to it that you don't pay for HOME and there's no financial disencentive--short of banning a console, which has it's own issues--and you have a real problem to deal with. Some of the worst things on Xbox Live are kids with weekend trial cards; it brings out the griefers in large numbers...

Actually it's very easy and I think it was mentioned in one of the interviews. Since people can only show you their own videos after you accept their invite to their appartments, you should pretty much now what you're getting into. If they do show inappropiate stuff you can report them. And people under a certain age simply can't accept invitations to other people's appartments, so they'll never be exposed to that kind of content.

 

[Sis]

It's possible they aren't even quite sure yet...

I wouldn't be surprised if they were waiting for the public/private betas to really test it out -- it's kind of hard to simulate this type of thing outside of making sure mute/silence/block buttons work. With real people, they can see how bad it might get and how likely people are to deal with it themselves.

Who knows... No doubt they've thought of it, as it's one of the first thoughts that sprung to mind in thousands of people who were briefed on the idea at GDC (and certainly if they somehow didn't know before, they realize now). Even if it was self moderation only, I don't see how, in the case of Home, that would be all that bad...

Perhaps it already works like this but I could see self-moderation work as long as you could only interact "richly" with the other avatars once you've added them to your friend's list. This way you have a lot greater control over who you can interact with. Lay on top of that a Parental Control system that parents can setup that require "approval"--such as password protected--before a friend can be added, a persistent Ignore option, and then I would agree that you have a fairly decent system of self-moderation that prevents griefers from causing too much problem.

And, perhaps, it can work that way by setting an option ("can only communicate with friends"). That way, adults can just jump in and interact, while parents can setup accounts for their kids with this flag set, and people who don't want all the noise can also set this flag.

 

[-tkf-]

What solution would you suggest? Moderation of potentially millions of people just isn't possible, especially on video content. You can test for keywords in text and even speech, but checking uploaded videos for dodgy content doesn't seem practical.

Does YouTube have any such safeguards?

In this case the Playstation Network should know everyone that enter the space, i´m talking Credit card and Adresses. Someone trying to do illegal things there would be stupid.