I was going to finish my PAX posts before I put this one up but considering how long that's taking if I don't do it now I'll forget.

The following is a 1 page blurb that I wrote up for a pen and paper rpg setting I was considering investing some time in.

The question then is; Would you play/buy this game?


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Running late on finishing of these posts. Still to come: a wrap up post and some pictures.

For me the star game of the show was somewhat surprising. It had a small(ish) and mostly unimpressive booth. It was the first booth in the door, but so unimposing was it that I missed it until almost the end of day 1.

Okay the computers they had out for the demo (10 or 12 of em) were sweet alienware items with multi-colour mood ring keyboard back lights and Dolby earphones (in-fact most of the booth staff were Dolby people not game people).

So from such a uninspiring presence to "Star of the show" is a surprise, that game was... read more (687 words)

Prince of persia
I saw a really big sign for it, but didn't actually see the game anyplace. Which is a pitty as I really wanted to see (and maybe play it). On the other hand...

Mirrors edge (playable demo)
The level they showed in the first two demo videos (the over rooftop bit that ends with Faith catching on to the helicopter) was present and fully playable. The good: It looks as good, or better, in real life and plays exactly how you hope it would. The first person is not distrracting in the least (my main worry) and the controls seem fluid and responsive. The bad: None really. The level shown is somewhat linear with only minnor choices of route to be made, but this is hardlly surprising as the makers are not advertising it as a free world roamer like Assasin's creed. The demo did have a habit of crashing at a particular fight, but thats to be expected at such an early stage in development.
Rating: Shiny

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I haven't posted yet about the expo floor yet. First it's huge. There were about 80 companies present, most games companies and most showing off more than 1 game. The hall is about 9000 square metres packed with booths and many many gammers.

Friday was a little too busy for my liking. You really couldn't move without barging in to someone or something. Saturday was a lot better and Sun day practically empty in comparison. Most games were playable, though a few were only present as video presentations.

The games I saw (this may take a few posts as I catch up with them all):

Dragon age: Origins (presentation)
Biowares new fantasy rpg game. Not impressed Graphically its looking pretty shiny. But everything else about it is pretty generic looking. There's a lot of character options and I guess taht makes it impossible to voice act the characters speach but I really fealt the lack off Mass Effects outstanding dialogue system. Combat looked like your typical MMO/RPG style bar of ability buttons. The voice acting of the NPCs was nothing special. It does come with a full editor suite so may well become the next big thing for user created games, but I'm not seeing anything bar graphics to make it stand out from the rest of it's ilk. I expected moore from Bioware.

Monsterpocalypse (Demo of partial game)
Privateer press' new miniature (pre-painted collectable kind) game. The miniatures are cool, and seem decently painted coloured. The mechanics seem interesting; the more you do with minions the more you get to do with your big monster. In a homage to teh movied each monster has a hyper form it can transform in to to increase its fighting powers. The demo however was relativly complex adn the staffer made a point of telling me she was skipping a lot of the advance rules. Not sure about this one, it may be worth picking up
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This was the 2nd of the two main "Get in to game development" pannels. This one was primarilly a talk by one guy who has a specialist blog on the topic. While full of usefull information it did contradict a few things from the first pannel on Friday.

More interestingly for me there was a developer there who knew the main speaker and stepped in to answer a few of the more programmer orientated questions. I managed to get 10 minutes to talk to him after the main pannel and he had a few suggestions as to the kind of things I may want to put together for a demo real.

His suggestion was to look in to the old school MUDs. My interests in game programming run more to back end engines (AI, path finding, cool new game mechanics and better quest generation) rather than graphics engines. As MUDs have a lot of these without the overhead of complicated graphics engines. I'm not 100% sold on the idea but I'm going to give it some thought. 

As of the end of day 2 the standout talk has been the designing virtual worlds talk on day 1. A number of topics wer covered on the process but the heart of the talk and subsequent questions was on persistence. Not just persistence of character but also of persistence of the world.

A MMO like WOW doesn't really have any world persistence. The game is constantlly reseting it's self back to a static norm. The players can't change the world in any way that's truly persistent. Other games have more scope for this; Star wars galaxies has substantial support for player cities (though it's descended in to a bit of a mess), WAR has its realm vs realm (but even it isn't permanent change). The king of user generated persistence is obviouslly Second life, but it isn't actually a game.

The two guys running the pannel had a lot of good things to say on the topic, some nice ideas and opinions, though no real specifics. It ties in to some thing I've been thinking about recently to do with user impacted world economies and generated quest systems (Which I keep meaning to write up sometime). 

Just got out of a really interesting talk on how D&D (and it's ilk) are failing to push forward the roll play aspect of the hoby instead concentrating on the game aspect (i.e. Combat). The 2 guys doing the talking presented a number of other systems that make atempts to better integrate the too. They presented a number of systems. Though they did concentrate a lot on "The burning wheel".

While they were both fun to listen too the hour did feel a little like a big atempt to justify their favorite system. That said I happen to agree with a lot of what they were saying and it's allways nice to hear ideas you have vague opinions on articulated well and clearlly.


 

So I'm sitting at the first PAX concert (my feet hurt too much to stand). Freezepop are not what I expected, much heavier, more industrial than expected from the little sample I heard last week.

What really strikes me are two differences to a normal concert: The almost complete lack of dancing (which confirms my opinions of geeks and dancing). That and the people sitting in the corner playing Nintendo DS.

Welcome to nerdvana.  

So pax has started. The first presentation on my list was in, what has to be, the worst presentation hall i've ever seen; It's actually quite funny. It really shows how the expo is overflowing in to every space the centre has, I don't know what they'll do for space if it continues to grow at this rate. We were sitting in what could be best described as a warehouse; concrete floors, strip lighting and a ceiling made of metal girders.

The pannel was good though. Started with a half hour of the panelists saying how they got in to the games industry. Some through fantastically convoluted paths. After that it was followed by a 30 minute Q&A. I was impressed by the questions; most wre serious inteligent queries from people that wanted in to the industry and the responses helped clarify a lot of misconceptions I had about the whole process, it gives me hope that it may be possilbe for me to make the transition sometime.

The best part, for me, had to be just after the session ended; the panelists hung arround and chatted to people, informally, for a good half hour. Along with a couple of other people I managed to corner one of Obsidian's developers for a great conversation.

It appears that to get in to the industry I may have to accept an effective demotion to a more junior roll, but that the chances for promotion back up the ranks is very good and probablly quicjk (assuming of course I can bring the kind of performance and success I've had in my current jobs to games).
 

So thats me in the queue to get in the door for PAX. Theres over 5000 people in this queue already, each one of them as much of a geek as me.

I'm home.