This was the first year the Independent Game Conference East has been held, and I think it was a great start. My hopes for IGC East were to do some good networking and see a few interesting sessions, and I feel I got even more than I bargained for. I’d like to recap a few personal notes on the experience and then share some notes and highlights from a few especially outstanding sessions.
Getting lost in Boston
I had the honor of being Scott Macmillan’s (Macguffin Games) ride to Northeastern University both days. This was an interesting experience for me not only because Scott is, well, and interesting guy, but also because I have very little driving experience in Boston. I expected it to be quite a learning experience, and it certainly was.
We got lost several times (we even asked a man for directions, at one point) but always quickly corrected ourselves and made our way to our destination eventually. Unfortunately, some last minute coding along with difficulty finding the parking garage (we drove right past it, geniuses we are) meant we missed the opening keynote by Vladimir Starzhevsky (Creat Studios), which I heard was pretty good.
In the end, I’m glad to have some more Boston driving experience under my belt (I even learned where the super-secret detour entrance to The Pike is!) and ultimately Scott was happy to have the extra computer which necessitated the use of my car to get to the event. In fact, we enjoyed the experience so much that we opted to drive there again the next day. (Nothing like an adventure!)
Demo Night, networking, tapas
One of the big highlights of IGCEast was Thursday’s Demo Night. Demo Night was a great community event. Besides the joy of getting to see so many interesting games shown off, it was nice to be able to show my support for my Boston indie friends and meet some interesting people who had come by to network and learn.
After Demo Night finally ended (for real) at 7:30, we headed over to The Savant Project tapas bar, where Mike Cavaretta of the New England Gamers SIG was hosting a nice, casual get-together. I really enjoyed the food there, and the atmosphere made for some good, casual hanging out. You can find some pictures from that event on the NE Games SIG blog here.
Sessions of note
The rest of what I have to recap from IGC East is session-specific. I will point out in particular the last session highlighted here, which was Dallas Snell’s keynote from Friday morning. Snell’s talk really inspired me and amped up the flames in the fire that’s been burning for me lately to make a true social game.
Standard disclaimer applies: these are simply my notes from the sessions, and any errors are mine and mine alone.
Rapid and iterative prototyping
Eitan Glinert and Ethan Fenn from Fire Hose Games talked about “Rapid and Iterative Prototyping”. Some pearls of wisdom they shared:
- make friends, and then ask them for help and advice
- deadlines are critical
- take advice with a grain of salt
- test all the time (they tested with “outsiders” once a week, every week)
- (as a result of testing) identify and remove bad ideas
- “do it now, get it right later”
- don’t argue about design ideas: implement, then test
- have playable builds all the time
- don’t pay testers: messy business liability and food can actually work better
Eitan also recommended that you start your prototyping by working full-time, because you can get so much more done that way. That said, he admitted at the end that these days the company is making ends meet by doing contract work, so clearly there’s a careful balancing act there.
Game design panel
This was a powerhouse panel made up of five highly experienced (some even legendary) game designers. The panel was made up of:
- Steve Meretzky (Playdom)
- Linda Currie (Creat)
- Chris Foster (Harmonix)
- Christopher Zirpoli (Auto Assault)
- Cardell Kerr (Turbine)
The discussion was broken down into ten “Really Important Topics” (RITs), so I’ll break my notes down by topic as well.
1.) Project Goals/Vision
- Meretzky: “one person should be the “keeper” of the vision
- Foster: “Harmonix has “The One Question” (ex: “Is it an authentic band experience?” for Rock Band) that helps them make design decisions
- Kerr: “Your vision is the razor with which you focus your game”
2.) Balance
- Meretzky:
- playtest with many different types of players
- balance frequency of rewards
- know when to balance
- Sometimes players ask for a game to be easier, but then find it’s too easy
- Zirpoli: Perception is everything – the game must feel balanced to players
- Kerr: if you don’t understand the game’s balance to begin with, you won’t be able to understand how players are breaking it after launch
3.) Interfacing
- Zirpoli: know your platform: “How do people play games on this platform?”
- Meretzky: putting even one click between the main UI and an action provides a barrier to users; try to make every interesting action one click (or one immediate action).
4.) Collaboration
- Foster: “you won the design process, but you don’t own the design”
- every voice on your team represents part of the game’s audience
- the designer must act as a sort of arbiter [my paraphrasing]
- Foster: unravel arguments to integrate the essence/hidden wisdom within every idea
5.) Meaningful Choices vs. Joy of Discovery
It was hard to take notes on this as it was a frantic, unstructured conversation, but the essences is this: it’s important to explore for your game the right balance between making it clear how your games works and allowing players to experience the joy of discovery through discovering as they go.
6.) Communication (and follow-through)
It’s way, way better to communicate 105% of the information than 95%. If you only give 95% of the information, people will stop trusting you and communication will break down.
7.) Constraints
Constraints help focus a game’s vision. Sometimes a game’s best and most unique elements are born from constraints. “don’t be afraid to follow your situation to its logical conclusion” and think creatively about how you can embrace your constraints.
8.) Don’t overdesign
Foster: No one reads design docs.
(I interpreted this part as: remember to keep the design simple and the product of the team’s communication and exploration – do not write the “Design Bible” for your game and expect everyone to live and die by it.
9.) Iteration! (You Will Guess Wrong)
Zirpoli: As game designers, we don’t build with stone, we build with clay
“Great tools enable iteration”
Foster: Iteration is about learning what you don’t know [love that one!]
10.) Research & QA
This conversation largely retreaded what was discussed in the “Don’t overdesign” part, and Damien Shubert’s GDC talk about building better design docs was highly recommended.
Foster: Remember to keep design an “active conversation”
Nothing casual about social games
This was Dallas Snell’s keynote from Friday morning. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for those who couldn’t attend it, it was the kind of presentation that loses a lot if you can’t be there to experience it as it was delivered. However, I will summarize his key points that he came to at the end.
Essentially, the point of his talk is that human beings are wired such that our social connections are primary to our well-being and sense of wellness; thus, we should be making games that help people develop social connections.
He referenced a scientist’s great work (I really need to look this up some time -- I believe it was the same work that inspired Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Blink”) about how people, when interacting, have what are called “bids”. Bids are mostly-subconscious attempts to connect with someone else. Often they’re as innocuous as some small bit of body language that must be reciprocated by the other person in order to strengthen the relationship.
Snell proposed that the popularity of Facebook and Twitter may be largely due to the fact that they facilitate bids between people. So, he suggests, we should make games that also facilitate bids. And he also recommends that we tap into player’s social graph, as it’s a powerful part of our lives. This is exactly the way I’ve been thinking about how to make a meaningful social game, so it was really great to hear.
Conclusion
IGC East was a really great experience. The best talks were edifying and inspiring, the networking was solid, and the sense of community was palpable. This event helped show that there really is a substantial Boston game development community. Between the Boston Post Mortem, GameLoop, and now IGC East, it’s clear that Boston is really maturing as a development scene, and it’s awesome to be a part of it.
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