The Square Enix session was full of very small, hard to read charts; nothing worth missing an episode of Project Runway over. Fortunately, I had obligations at the Motorola room (I had to be there for the 11am draw for a free Motorola phone).
The afternoon sessions were a blur. There seemed to be a divide between two different philosophies across the industry. Half the sessions pointed in the direction towards more console-like games with console-like characters and console-like play mechanics. The other half seemed to want to try to focus on offering a unique experience to the mobile gaming scene and creating a rewarding experience using unique mechanics specific to mobile phones (such as flipping the phone upside down, vibration, connectivity etc.). The session on making games fun was useful and enlightening. The presenter of this session brought up a lot of ideas to make games fun and focused on the need for more visual feedback for in-game accomplishments. Every time they do something right, make sure the user knows it. Additionally, they said that developers should budget time to make games fun. Iterate and play test: duh!
At this point, I should point out that I went the Motorola room about 4 or 5 more times for their draws. Each time I went with high hopes and each time I was senselessly beat. I was pretty desperate to get my hands on some precious Moto-swag.
The King Kong post mortem was a bit unnerving because the presenter said that
it took Gameloft over a year to make with a large team and an already existing game engine. Most mobile games today take between 3 and 6 months to make with small team sizes, so I was a bit thrown off by this session. Personally, I think they where trying to scare off and discourage smaller developers.
Tuesday night wasn’t anything exciting (nowhere near to the fine dining experience at Denny’s just a few nights before). There where some parties to go to but I ended up just crashing at the hotel; I needed to rest up and save my energy in order to run the gauntlet at the expo floor the next morning - it would soon be a swag free-for-all.
Day two rating:
Interesting Material: 8/10 (Do we really need a session on whether branding is worth it?? I can tell you right now: if you think you can make more money than you paid for the brand and it doesn�t negatively impact the budget for your development and it will help you sell your game, then yes, branding is good).
Technical Presentation: 5.0/10 (Very few game demos in real time during the demo session).
Motivational: 7/10 (The making games ‘fun’ session was informative and some of the games they talked about during the ‘demo’ session were cool).
Swag-O-Meter: 2.5/10 (0 for 5 on the Motorola draws; just one lousy t-shirt all day).
Related posts:
- Game Developers Conference ‘06 Report: Day 1 Blog
- Austin Game Conference: 05 Report
- Mobile Game Conference — Panel Report
- Mobile Game Conference — Panel Report
- Mobile Game Conference — Panel Report
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