Chicago Base Podcasts

Gamasutra is proud to present the latest Gamasutra Podcast, part of our regular GDC Radio podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences. For today's podcast, we present an interview with Iain Simons, writer and live events coordinator of Nottingham's GameCity Festival. Besides serving as the co-creator of GameCity -- now going on to its third year, Simons is the author of three books: Difficult Questions about Videogames, BFI Film Guides 100 Videogames, and Inside Game Design -- part of which was recently excerpted on Gamasutra. He is a tireless advocate for the cultural significance of games. In the course of conversation about the festival, which grew out of and evolved from initially more informal alcohol- and curry-fueled get-togethers, Iain speaks passionately about various subjects such as the role of game advocates as apologists of the medium, the lack of a human face to the games industry, and the reluctance of game publishers to discuss the process of creating games as opposed to promoting finished product. He also takes the comparison of games and cinema to task, particularly regarding what that analogy implies about the aspirations of the form. He talks about themes that have been going through his mind recently, such as non-threatening entertainment, the removal of player-character death from modern game design, and safety and the permission to explore in-game environments. He also discusses how to make games and game culture more palatable to non-gamer audiences. These include directly addressing the creative process of making games -- getting to questions that one might ask of any creator working in better known contemporary mediums. Finally, Simons discusses ideas that didn't quite make it into his latest publication, Inside Game Design, and what factors defined which ideas made it into the book or not. He also shares some wonderful personal anecdotes about developer involvement with both GameCity and Inside Game Design. And he closes with Nottingham Trent University Undergraduate and Post-graduate programs' support of GameCity's latest project: an archive of early to current game artifacts and history.

Speaking as part of an in-depth Gamasutra report on EVE Online's Fanfest held in Reykjavik, Iceland, CCP executive Hilmar Ptursson has been discussing how the complex economy and new elected 'Council of Stellar Management' bring structure (and therefore focus) to the PC space trading MMO. When discussing why the EVE Online community, which has grown steadily to over 200,000 active subscribers, is so invested in the game, Ptursson suggested: "I would say what ties it all together is the economy. The economy of the game is very much controlled by the players. All prices are decided on the market, CCP doesn't set a price on it... And then the game very much focuses on [the fact] that you're always at risk in terms of all the players attacking you or taking something away from you. So that creates very interesting interactions between war and the economy." Though the economy in EVE Online is much more complex and modeled than many other MMOs, Ptursson suggests this leads to a more interesting and competitive game: "War and economy is something that has created a lot of events in human history. That is essentially what we maybe have put in place to drive the storyline. But then, the players have used those systems to create something much more spectacular than we could ever have envisioned in the beginning. So I would say, the economy is the tool to create this." Interestingly, Ptursson also discussed how to easily garner feedback from the increasingly large player base of the game, revealing that the company is adding an officially elected council to exchange feedback between CCP and the community: "For soliciting community feedback, we have used various methods throughout the four years. And we're trying to evolve those as our world has evolved. You use different methods for a community of 50,000 players than you do for a community of 200,000 players. Especially when all those players live in the same world. It's different when you have sharded worlds down to smaller shards, and you just have more shards. And you have to tackle the community of each shard. Then you can use the same method, but scale it up. But when the community fundamentally grows as it has in our case, then you have to adapt and evolve your method of soliciting community feedback. And we're now, at this Fanfest, introducing a new idea which we call the Council of Stellar Management which involves allowing the community to elect representatives for a council. And we'll do this through voting. So this council will then be a venue for exchange between the community and CCP so that it is a more meaningful discussion than us talking in a non-structured way with 200,000 people which... um, achieves very little in its current form." You can now read the full Gamasutra report on the subject, including full coverage of the Fanfest itself, as well as more comments from the CCP CEO on the state of the game and technical and design plans for the future.

For today's podcast, we present an interview with Mike Wilson, Grand Champeen of Gamecock Media Group, who we caught up in Chicago with after a marketing and promotion planning meeting with Wideload Games. Co-founder Wilson has a vital business role in game history over the past 15 years - working at id, setting up the influential GodGames, and now running his upstart publisher (Dementium, Hail To The Chimp), and this latest Podcast, he talks about his storied career and intriguing plans. Gamecock's business philosophy sees it stretching themselves to leverage very asset from box designs, guerrilla marketing to reach untraditional audiences, and direct communications with gamer communities. It also secures approval from the developer on all phases of marketing, advertising, promotions, and PR. This philosophy stems from Wilson's deep history in game development and publishing, starting out at DWANGO and id Software, and moving on to Ion Storm, and his first venture in artist-driven publishing, Gathering of Developers. Wilson generously shares his personal experiences and observations working in the game development and publishing industries, and how he has refined his personal and professional approach along the way. Although Gamecock Media Group is a new venture, Wilson reveals how the principles on which the company was founded have been in existence for more than a decade. You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: The Strange History Of Gamecock's Mike Wilson (.MP3, 54 minutes, 25 MB). Today's podcast is also being simultaneously offered as a feature on Gamasutra.com. In addition, you can subscribe to the Gamasutra podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.

For today's program, we wrap up our interviews from this year's Penny Arcade Expo with double-header conversations with both president and CEO Vlad Ceraldi and COO Joel DeYoung of Penny Arcade Adventures developer Hothead Games, and CCP Whitewolf's Peter Golan and Noah Ward, marketing director and lead game designer of EVE Online. In the first part, Hothead Games' Ceraldi and DeYoung describe the challenges studios faces from quality of life for older employees with families, staffing and outsourcing pressures, new technologies, and as-yet still small installed bases. The two talk particular Hothead strategies such as taking advantage of alternate distribution platforms, adopting novel production models for games using a best-fit supplier model and scalable staffing to maximize efficiency. They also discuss how these strategies don't mean that a developer has to sacrifice on quality. Next, Peter Golan and Noah Ward discuss the longevity of their lead franchise, EVE Online. EVE has been on the marketplace since 2003, far longer than most MMOs. Interestingly, EVE has always had great subscriber retention and a steadily growing base since its launch. Golan and Ward explain how they aren't afraid to make a specialized experience for a hardcore audience, and in fact how their focus has lead to their ongoing success. In their upcoming expansions, they state that CCP has no plans to simplify their game, but are interested in providing tools to the player to more clearly introduce new players to the options their game has to offer. Although they don't seek to make their game more mainstream, they discuss their efforts to ensure that everyone has a significant role, regardless of their experience or rank. They talk about how most of the changes to the game to date have been directly driven by their player base and how their design philosophy has always allowed their players to dictate a remarkable level of input and control over the lore and design of the EVE universe. You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast: PAX 2007 Interviews with Hothead Games and CCP Whitewolf (.MP3, 32 minutes, 14.8 MB). In addition, you can subscribe to the Gamasutra podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.