Jump to content

GDC 2010


Ephesos

Recommended Posts

...is this week. Out of curiosity, is anyone else here attending? Has anyone else attended, period?

 

Even if nobody else is attending, I wanted to link to this, the list of Independent Games Festival finalists for this year. Seeing as a large number of the games listed are either free or have a free demo, they are most certainly worth your time.

 

That said, what have people been playing lately, aside from Spiderweb games and AIMhack campaigns?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally Posted By: Ephesos
That said, what have people been playing lately, aside from Spiderweb games and AIMhack campaigns?
Just finished a five player game of Shadows over Camelot -- to be precise, the Merlin expansion (SoC was recently covered on Penny Arcade, for those unfamiliar with the game). It was a shaky beginning, but we were all Loyal, so we won without much difficulty.

Huh?

Oh, you mean computer games. Not much, as university is consuming my life. I have been tinkering with Team Fortress 2 in my spare time. Just playing with bots, getting a feel for the game and the classes. I'm not brave enough to venture into the wonderful world of "ONLINE EXPERIENCE MAY VARY" yet.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In related gaming news:

 

Click to reveal..
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

| Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down                                                     |

|   from the single-point-of-well-you-know dept.                                               |

|   posted by kdawson on Sunday March 07, @19:23 (Games)                                       |

|   https://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/08/004219/Ubisofts-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down   |

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

 

ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically [0]awful new DRM you

must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy.

Not only was this DRM broken [1]the very first day it was released, but

now their [2]authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one

who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people

began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't

access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can

only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

 

Discuss this story at:

   http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10/03/08/004219

 

Links:

   0. http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/02/27/163226/The-Awful-Anti-Pirate-System-That-Will-Probably-Work

   1. http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/03/05/027258/Ubisofts-New-DRM-Cracked-In-One-Day

   2. http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/07/ubisoft-drm-authentification-server-is-down-assassins-creed-2/

 

I know Jeff wrote an article on this idea, and I guess he was right...in any case, lulz at Ubisoft. Their evil came back to bite them in the arse.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally Posted By: Taslim
I know Jeff wrote an article on this idea, and I guess he was right...in any case, lulz at Ubisoft. Their evil came back to bite them in the arse.
Actually, JV's prediction was that Ubisoft's system would last long enough for them to make a profit. The game servers crashing doesn't help in that regard. Secondly, JV predicted it would take a while for the DRM to be cracked, and it was pretty much a zero day exploit (of course, JV's point was that circumventing DRM is beyond the ability of the average gamer, something that a lot of people on Slashdot didn't catch/agree with).

In other news, I'm reading my e-mail, and apparently my Friendly Local Gaming Store is trying to host a thirty player Magic the Gathering event (Morningtide/Eventide sealed) for free. The manager really, really wants this event to happen. Currently, only one store in my city is able to host prereleases, and he would be able to do so as well if this event happens. However, I'm not holding my breath. He's tried this twice before (Eventide draft), and both times the event was cancelled due to lack of participation.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan
In other news, I'm reading my e-mail, and apparently my Friendly Local Gaming Store is trying to host a thirty player Magic the Gathering event (Morningtide/Eventide sealed) for free. The manager really, really wants this event to happen. Currently, only one store in my city is able to host prereleases, and he would be able to do so as well if this event happens. However, I'm not holding my breath. He's tried this twice before (Eventide draft), and both times the event was cancelled due to lack of participation.


...how far away is this Friendly Local Gaming Store? tongue
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No free handouts yet, as the expo part of the convention isn't open until tomorrow. Getting in today, gaining two hours, eating multiple dinners, wandering around large parts of the city... fun stuff.

 

Minor networking, but no awesome convention stuff just yet. Mix-up of which hotel we were staying in, now we have one room, 4 people, one bed. Lame.

 

More tomorrow. Wireless in hotel is kinda lame.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will most certainly not have time. Running around enough as is. tongue

 

On the subject of talks and presentations that people have been giving, it's been interesting. Today's keynote was Sid Meier talking about the psychology of game design. To paraphrase:

 

-The players are egomaniacs

-People suck at math, particularly probability

-Epic is good

 

On the expo floor, it's been interesting. Once more, I encourage everyone here to check out as many of the IGF nominees (and winners) as possible, because they are quite excellent. Note: Some of the titles will contain language and other objectionable things, but that doesn't mean they aren't awesome (particularly Rocketbirds: Revolution!, which is AWESOME)

 

On the career front, I've been getting a lot of good vibes, obviously no offers just yet or I'd be too busy jumping for joy to post. The week following the conference (the dreaded follow-up) will likely be key. I can't help but be nervous, but so far the situation looks to be leaps and bounds better than last year.

 

Also, last night was the IGF awards show, as well as the Game Developers' Choice awards. There were a few contentious entries, such as Heroes of Newerth, which should not have been in the IGF since it was produced by a much bigger and experienced studio. But on the whole, it seems that the most deserving games won... and then Uncharted 2 pretty much cleaned up the Developers' Choice awards, stealing a few categories in my opinion (really? better art than Flower?). It also makes me sad because there's no way I'll be playing it for a long time, unless a PS3 magically materializes in my house sometime soon. And now that it's won a lot... I can't help but be intrigued. One last note from the awards, the infamous Farmville won the new category for Best Social Networking Game, and the acceptance speech was one of the most menacing I've ever heard, essentially trying to scare indie developers into coming to the social games scene, because it's the last frontier (a statement which has almost universally been incorrect at each utterance).

 

...also, Rocketbirds: Revolution! should've won something. frown

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally Posted By: Ephesos
...also, Rocketbirds: Revolution! should've won something. frown


I just played the first level,
i think the walking was to slow but other than that it was a great game.
as for wining something it was a great game, but so were most games there.
still it is better than 90% of the games online and theres always next year.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally Posted By: I need no introduction
i think the walking was to slow


You know you can run, right?

Quote:
still it is better than 90% of the games online and theres always next year.


...that's not how the IGF works. You get one shot, and that's when your game is released. You can't reapply next year. Which makes it even shadier that Heroes of Newerth got into the voting, because it took a spot from someone else.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been meaning to play some of the indi games they mentioned in the awards. Some of them look really awesome.

 

Kotaku has been posting brief (~3 minute) interviews with some of the award winners if people feel like checking them out.

 

I was annoyed at the webcast for the awards, though, they screwed up and did not show Gabe Newell's fake BSOD :-/. I had to wait for pictures to find out the new obscurely delivered information I really already knew!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Conference is over, I'm very tired. 14 hours of sleep over 4 days is not good, but on the whole, the trip was pure awesomeness. And I think I have a few good leads for jobs, even. laugh

 

Originally Posted By: cfgauss
I was annoyed at the webcast for the awards, though, they screwed up and did not show Gabe Newell's fake BSOD :-/.

 

Yeah... I was sitting pretty far back, so I never got a good look at it.

 

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet
I'll see what this AIMhack is about, once I learn how to use AIM.

 

You know you would be more than welcome to join, FF.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heroes of Newerth won an award? Wow. Never knew that. I have to agree on Eph said about it. Sure S2 ain't one of the mainstream gaming companies but they already have an established company. Though, how does one describe an indie game developer now? Should it be one of those people whom you can only find in the deep recesses of the interwebz just to get a glimpse of a game in process that will never be completed? Or are they the ones not called Electronic Arts, Bioware, Ubisoft etc.?

 

Sidenote: If anyone else is playing HoN. Hit me up, my username is Garche.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rocketbirds seems pretty smooth, with a simple interface that can do a lot and make it feel natural; though it's not really my kind of game. You can actually move pretty fast by rolling.

 

But I'm really intrigued by some of those other games. Cogs and Vessel look great. I'm not sure they'll come out for Mac, but maybe for iPad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...