Free Play - The Independent Game Developers Conference Wrap-up: Day One Features
By G. Turner
Posted June 8, 2004

The following is a contribution from The New Gamer guest contributor SirMuffinMan.

So you've seen what Ronn had to say about the Game Developers Conference in San Jose just a few months ago. As you have seen, it's a very big event with plush inflatable chairs, nifty pass tags and a lot of slick, new demos. Obviously, this was an event of exceedingly high calibre.

Not to be outdone, I decided I would scour the local media to find something equal to-... no, better! than this prestigious and exciting event that I could subsequently attend and write a thoughtful and inspirational article on. After a thorough perusing of the print at the bottom of my emu's birdcage and looking through my diverse collection of smutty publications, I found nothing. Desperate and downtrodden, I wandered the Melbourne streets, hoping for guidance, I was certainly a lost soul. All of a sudden, a beacon of light appeared. However, it was just a passing car and I was subsequently drenched as it drove through a nearby puddle. Grabbing a nearby piece of paper from a nearby gutter to wipe my face, I was instantly drawn to the content of the torn and damp piece of paper that I had retrieved. An independent game developers conference was being held, right here in Melbourne, Australia! Overjoyed, I hurried to buy my suspiciously cheap tickets. Then I realised it was partly Government-funded, so I was no longer surprised at the low prices.

The Independent Game Developers Conference (titled Free Play) is a three-day session consisting of many forums, workshops and demo displays, ended with an indie mock-up of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, humorously titled "E3.1b", tongue firmly in cheek. Unfortunately, at the time of this conference my life was filled with stupid obligations like "work" and "class", and I was subsequently unavailable to visit some of the things I wanted to. The average day of events run from 10am to 7:30pm, and this was even on a Friday, when the only people in attendance would be unruly children and die-hard developers. The conference was largely aimed at developers and modders, encouraging people to even bring their own demos and talents to the conference to present them. However, I'm just a lowly gamer/computer science student, so I was nothing but a spectator during my time there, which wasn't too bad.

Friday

I arrived especially late, excited to attend the latter half of the discussion forum "A Game Developer's Place in Society and Culture". To be honest, I almost walked right past the entrance. It was just a door to a small building with a piece of paper on it that simply said 'Free Play: Upstairs'. Having previously read that most of the funding was spent on getting decent speakers and not on securing a large venue (especially since demand wouldn't be too large I imagine), I didn't really object. Hurriedly, I rushed inside before another car tried to soak me from head to toe by hitting a strategically-placed puddle.

Our hero breaks free from his ..shackle.

After crawling up four flights of stairs, I finally reached the venue. It was a converted dojo! Fold-out chairs had been placed on the moderate amount of wooden floorspace, facing a projection screen and a long table with microphones. Large posters of Asian males engaged in what appeared to be complex sexual positions adorned the walls alongside the projection screen. I approach the registration desk, and I grab a handful of pamphlets and stuff. Unlike Ronn and his nifty Gamespy Expo Pass tag, someone simply put this specially-made paper band and fastened it around my wrist, like a damned criminal. I was told not to remove it for the duration of the conference, or else I wouldn't be able to come back in on the following days.

So, tagged with a practically-irremovable red paper band (I can't imagine how I'm going to shower with it on), I moved to the back of the venue, looking for the mysteriously-named "Room 3" in which the panel was being held. After consulting the lovely blue map, I was on my way. To the back of the venue, down a considerable number of stairs, through a very nice alley (which is the only semi-decent photo I got of anything during the entire conference), and down a very long street. I finally reached Room 3, which was (once again) in an almost-hidden doorway, and then down some stairs, to the back room of an art gallery. The whole time I was travelling, I couldn't help but feel like I was part of some underground organisation, destined to crush the big game developers and publishers through covert warfare and secret conferences held beneath the streets of Melbourne.

Enroute to "Room 3".

Still in my Resistance mentality, I pull back the heavy black curtain, to be greeted by a panel of people whom I didn't recognise. They were speaking to a room of about 60 people about the future of the industry, especially regarding the increasing mainstream role of games in society, and how they are only just now being regarded as art instead of just a commercial product. This was possibly the most interesting aspect of the panel for me. Trying to relate the movie industry (particularly the arthouse genre of films) in terms of the difference between a commercial game and a game that is simply art (though these are extremely rare, in my opinion). There was also a fairly in-depth discussion about the limit to graphical quality of games. Some people believe photorealism to be a reachable goal well within the realm of possibility, but there was a little uncertainty regarding what would happen after that. Would games no longer be judged on their visual quality, instead allowing more focus on the gameplay, or would the boundaries be pushed even further in a way that I can't even imagine (though I bet it involves aliens or something)? Personally, I think that gameplay will have to become more and more innovative once the novelty of being able to create photorealistic worlds wears off, and some of the more recent titles out there that are nothing but eye-candy would be exposed as the horribly underdeveloped (in terms of gameplay) pieces of tripe that they are. Indeed, I have no doubt it will be a very exciting time for the industry.

There were a lot of interesting questions asked by the audience, and I must admit that I was a little intimidated by the knowledge and information that some of these people had access to. Questions regarding audio quality in games (and some neat inside info on how little effort is usually put into audio, usually only assigning it a minuscule budget, like a "side project") which many people agreed was a noticeable problem in most games these days. I really regret that I had missed most of the discussion, and I soon had to leave for the PS2 Homebrew workshop.

I think the term 'workshop' was a misnomer; it was basically a lecture with a few demos. Essentially, this was an introductory seminar into the Playstation 2 development community, and the various routes anyone could take in order to develop PS2 games from their own home with very minimal equipment. Forget spending a heap of money on buying a development kit, we were informed of by the webmasters of ps2dev.org on how I can simply use a few nifty exploits and begin coding my very own Pong game! Amazing! It was a fairly interesting talk, and I learnt a lot about the PS2 development community, which has progressed a lot more than I thought it had. You can check it out for yourself at http://www.ps2dev.org if you're interested.

...Harvey Smith.

The final part of the day was definitely the highlight. Harvey Smith (Lead Designer for Deus Ex and Project Leader for Deus Ex 2) gave a keynote speech. Flying in all the way from Texas, jetlagged and freshly unemployed, his talk, "Independent Development in a World of Giants" was basically a re-telling of his career and what he's learned from it. He went into great detail about the current state of the industry at this period of time, which he calls 'The Beginning of the Interactive Age'. Things like how the large publishers bully developers into surrendering their intellectual property for some sort of contract. He brought up a lot of extremely interesting points regarding the growing influence of games in society. For example, he showed that literature was once like games, in that it was not regarded as a serious medium, and that only poetry was regarded as the only written artform. The same also applied to comics and movies. I thought that this point was extremely interesting, and it certainly shows that the future of the industry could vastly improve very shortly, when they are accepted as a more mainstream form of communication.

His use of personal experience in the gaming industry seemed to be his preferred discussion topic. He was very insistent on the concept of "not selling ones soul" to the industry. Though it may seem arrogant, I really think that there is no way of doing that, and that he is only saying that because he's already been successful, and an independent developer can go their whole life being bitter without a published game. Personally, I don't like this idea. I mean, sure, in hindsight he can say things like that but most aspiring developers would rather get a game published than stay "true to the games" like a true artist. This is especially true considering that games aren't even widely regarded as an artform, as was mentioned earlier. Though, the video game industry version of "payola" (much like the radio DJ fiasco which came to light a few years ago) was something that was brought up, something that I had no idea of.

Harvey's keynote speech will definitely be one of the most memorable ones of my life, simply because he made me decide indefinitely that I don't want to code games. I'm not saying that he made the industry seem horrible and negative, but some of the passing comments he made me realise that it's definitely not for me. Things like some people working 100 hours a week (mostly by their own choice) to meet a deadline, and the ways that the industry really works were very enlightening. Things like that aren't taught in Computer Science degrees, and it was incredibly refreshing to learn something that was relevant to the industry. In fact, it left me so dumbfounded that I didn't even stay behind afterwards for the "social event" (that's programmer-speak for 'free alcohol and mindless chatter') which followed. I'm sure that it would have been a lot of peoples dreams to even talk to some of the lead designers and developers in Australia and even the world, but to be honest, I felt really intimidated by the whole situation. I mean, what could I possibly talk about with people like that without feeling really dumb? So, lacking underdeveloped social skills and any funny anecdotes related to what the name "Deus Ex" really means, I left for home, eager for Day 2 of the exciting conference.

Our Free Play report concludes later this week!

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Est. 2003