Allright so I’ve been in Cologne for the GDC now for two days and I thought I’d write a short sum-up of my impressions.
The absolutely most interesting thing you notice is the sort of disruption that “browser” based (runescape) and “social” games (farmville) have caused in the industry. Most noticably social games since they often have extremely low production costs but absolutely huge revenues.
Estimates are that Zynga makes about as much money as Blizzard but with higher profits. Some numbers suggest that social games have 45% profit margin while the console industry wrestles with approximately 3%.
This makes a lot of people nervous, and I believe there’s been a real shift in the audience here. I guess there’s still a large amount of “traditional” business going on with publishers talking to and signing game developers, talking to distributors etc but I see a lot of online game developers who publish themselves or hook up to Facebook, Bigpoint or similar sites. I see a lot less Work for Hire companies and Distributors this year.
It’s like the industry has been staring themselves blind on consoles and are waking up in a nightmare.
What I did Day 1:
All Point Bulletins Postmorten session was cancelled for some reason.
Listened to Bo Wang from Tencent Games – don’t remember much.
David Cage explained how Heavy Rain was developed. It sounds absolutely amazing and I hope to play it. They spent something like 4 years with 250 people on it. The risk involved in that was apparent but from what I understand they made it.
Petur Johannes from Eve explained how Player councils work in Eve and other MMOs.
Warren Spector held a fantastic keynote where he explained his view of games as an artform and we got to see a trailer for the next Disney game.
Finished of with Steve Meretzky from Playdom who gave good insights in how they produced their Social City facebook game and generously gave away lots of hints, tips and formulaes they use. Very interesting even though the simplicity of the concept kind of makes me a bit naseuos.
Day 2:
Heiko Hubertz the CEO of Bigpoint talked about how they have grown and their plans for the North American market, the differences and difficulties. He gave insight in how Zynga, which is a lot newer company could surpass them in size and revenue so easily acting on the homogenous US market where you don’t need to support 30 languages.
We attended a semi-interesting panel about browser based versus client based MMOs, the conclusion of which pretty much is that the type of game has influence on whichever you choose.
Martin Walfisz of the Swedish company Planeto held a very good presentation where he explained the mechanics behind social games. I liked the definition of a social game as a tactic rather than a type of game.
Keynote from the guys behind Killzone, Guerilla Games.
An old style conference panel where companies such as the publisher EA and developer Avalanche described how to get contacts and contracts I guess. I heard a bit bad and I didn’t feel it applied much to my situation.
A guy we’ve had some beers and laughs with, Andreas Öjerfors held a very good seminar where he explained the untapped potential of MMOs which he believes is the ability to achieve change and have impact on the game. Which of course is right up my alley!
