2008 Woodie Awards
Vegas video game summit honors design developers
Britton Peele
Issue date: 2/13/08 Section: La Vida
Last week, perhaps the most eventful thing in the gaming world was D.I.C.E.
No, there wasn't a sudden resurgence of Risk and Dungeons & Dragons players (wouldn't that be awesome?), but rather a 2008 game developers' conference in Las Vegas, hosted by the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The D.I.C.E. - Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain - Summit is a three-day conference primarily for people who make video games to gather, bringing some of the most creative minds in the industry together in one place.
The show opened with a keynote address from Gore Verbinski, director of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. He seems an odd choice for a speaker at an event for interactive entertainment, when he's had little to do with video games, and sure enough he opened by talking about the "Pirates" movies and the criticisms they received.
He did eventually relate this to storytelling in games, warning game developers of what he called "the homogenization of voice." He cautioned the industry against letting creativity be stifled by commerce and the mass consumer. He also worked in some good bashing of licensed games Â- particularly games based on films - that are notorious for have rushed development cycles, low production values, and overall bad quality.
Above all, he discussed storytelling, advising game makers on what "Hollywood" traps to avoid and how he thought it was best to handle interactive media. Near the end of his address, he seemed to stress "madness," mentioning "Guitar Hero" as a concept that was a long time coming, as it took awhile to convince publishers a plastic guitar would sell well. "But that wasn't what the Guitar Hero guys understood," Verbinski said. "They understood that, at one point, everyone has stood in front of a mirror with a tennis racket and just rocked out."
Verbinski wasn't the only speaker at the event. Over the course of the conference, attendants were able to sit in on seminars by developers at companies such as Blizzard Entertainment, Microsoft Game Studios, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Insomniac Games, Q Entertainment and more. These speeches covered a variety of topics, with titles including, "Characters in Games," "Implementing Creativity," "Designing for Money," "Breaking the Broken Model" and more.
No, there wasn't a sudden resurgence of Risk and Dungeons & Dragons players (wouldn't that be awesome?), but rather a 2008 game developers' conference in Las Vegas, hosted by the Academy of Arts and Sciences. The D.I.C.E. - Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain - Summit is a three-day conference primarily for people who make video games to gather, bringing some of the most creative minds in the industry together in one place.
The show opened with a keynote address from Gore Verbinski, director of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. He seems an odd choice for a speaker at an event for interactive entertainment, when he's had little to do with video games, and sure enough he opened by talking about the "Pirates" movies and the criticisms they received.
He did eventually relate this to storytelling in games, warning game developers of what he called "the homogenization of voice." He cautioned the industry against letting creativity be stifled by commerce and the mass consumer. He also worked in some good bashing of licensed games Â- particularly games based on films - that are notorious for have rushed development cycles, low production values, and overall bad quality.
Above all, he discussed storytelling, advising game makers on what "Hollywood" traps to avoid and how he thought it was best to handle interactive media. Near the end of his address, he seemed to stress "madness," mentioning "Guitar Hero" as a concept that was a long time coming, as it took awhile to convince publishers a plastic guitar would sell well. "But that wasn't what the Guitar Hero guys understood," Verbinski said. "They understood that, at one point, everyone has stood in front of a mirror with a tennis racket and just rocked out."
Verbinski wasn't the only speaker at the event. Over the course of the conference, attendants were able to sit in on seminars by developers at companies such as Blizzard Entertainment, Microsoft Game Studios, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Insomniac Games, Q Entertainment and more. These speeches covered a variety of topics, with titles including, "Characters in Games," "Implementing Creativity," "Designing for Money," "Breaking the Broken Model" and more.
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