My first taste of E3 was from watching Victor film his way through crowds, interviewing the big boys where he could and exploring all the new tech that would be coming our way at some point. It was intoxicating, thrilling, and completely ahead of its time. Colour me impressed.

Flash forward to 2010, GDC Day Two. I’m now twenty-three.

Still a hopeless fan-girl.

Tommy Tallarico (one of the co-hosts and producer of Electric Playground as well as the brain behind Video Games Live) and Victor Lucas take the stage and launch right into their retrospective of Tommy’s career in games, with a few tidbits about the beginnings of Electric Playground. I sat enraptured by these men that I’d only ever seen on TV, wondering to myself how many of these kids knew who these guys were.

Passion and Sticktoitness

“Be a fan-boy (or girl). You’d be surprised by the number of people in the game industry that don’t love games. Or even play them.”

We were asked if we played games, we audience members. Every single person in the room put up their hands, including the press (of which there were only a handful). Fervently. To me – girl gaming advocate – the thought of people in industry not bothering to play games was not only shocking but altogether distasteful. In its childhood, the game industry was about picking up people off the street or poaching them from software firms to create fun, interesting games with a small team of devs and artists. Sound wasn’t even a huge thing until the early nineties. Now that we’ve reached adolescence, the majority of the game industry is all about flash! Bang! Whiz! without any of the substance or game play.

The audience wanted to know: how do you make it? How do you set yourself apart from the other animators, designers, and developers? What will make you special?

Simple: passion. A passion for games; passion for the industry; and, most importantly, passion for your craft, whatever it may be. Attend conferences and conventions (for example, GDC Prime in San Francisco is a mega conference in comparison to the handful that attended GDC Vancouver). Ask questions. Fine tune your skills. Ask the smaller companies if they need anything done for free. Give them your utmost attention. As is in business, over-deliver. Impress. Be original. Be reliable.

Stick to it. Know that your path is in the industry and never let it show that you’re beaten down and broken. Business is a battlefield and the game industry is no exception. Or, if your name is Tommy Tallarico, just treat your future employer and/or business partner to a lap-dance. Apparently, that’s an excellent icebreaker and fun way to get to know one another!

Laughter is encouraged, especially at strip clubs.

Game Press and Why We Suck

“Out of all the different niche press, ours sucks the most. No one’s willing to ask the big questions. It’s not journalism: it’s a one sided argument with no fact-checking or follow-up.”

I swallowed hard at that. My badge said “Press”. My netbook and professional attire said “I do this for a living!”

But Tommy was right.

We are the fans. We are the consumers. Can we, the online press, call ourselves journalists without the credentials to back it up? I’ve been thinking about this for a week and I don’t have any answers. What I do know is that as concerned consumers and those that present our findings to the online public, we have a responsibility to investigate to the best of our ability to make sure that we’re not presenting half truths or all-out lies (whether or not we’ve been fed bad information). As online writers and contributors, we have a social and ethical responsibility to ourselves and our readers to double and triple check everything we say.

The internet monster has a long memory. Publish it and it’s not likely to disappear, even after you’ve deleted it from your server.

I posit this for all ye gaming fans and online writers: reading and writing online shouldn’t be “reader beware”; we need to be sure of what we’re posting and writing about in order to be considered serious contributors. If you don’t think it’s true, ask questions. Dig deeper. Ask the uncomfortable questions.

I, for one, am enrolling in an investigative journalism class to brush up on those skills because high school journalism just doesn’t count for much if you’ve been out for six years.

End-Game

The panel with Tommy Tallarico and Victor Lucas was by far the most informative and interesting of the two days. Questions were asked and answered. Insights were provided. I got to see two of my game journalism heroes in the flesh. GDC Canada gave me a taste of what the GDC can offer to anyone in the industry, be they in it or looking to break in. I look forward to next year’s GDC and GDC Canada to see what they come up with.

BioWare Brings the Beauty.

A must-see for me was the panel by Clove Roy and Shane Hawco, two of BioWare‘s lead animators, both of which had worked on the epic RPG, “Dragon Age: Origins”. The panel, titled “Bringing Dragon Age to Life”, detailed the process that the BioWare Edmonton team went through in order to create a robust (and incredibly reusable) set of tools for creating and rendering all of the different characters (primary, secondary, and tertiary NPCs).

I come from a computer science background; I’m firmly ensconced in all things code. To see how the artistry came together through a combination of talent and mathematics was enough to make my nerdy little heart soar.

And then we saw demos.

Demos and trailers and more demos.

We watched in (sometimes) silent awe over how complex and powerful the proprietary tools were. The team used things like FaceFX, Mug Shop (both developed by a team of programmers at BioWare), and 3DsMax. Manipulating the meshes to create bones and muscles within the faces brings these static, generic molds to life. We saw how the animators, artists, and designers “massage” the meshes and textures to create characters like Morrigan, Alistair (<3), and Oghren. They also went into detail about how they were able to use the system to allow the player to customize their player characters through use of sliders to control the meshes and textures.

Within Dragon Age, there is a universal mesh that’s used to create all of the subsequent meshes (for masculine/feminine, dwarves, qunari, children, etc.). On top of that, there are textures and effects that are used to create the difference between the skin tone and texture of Morrigan vs. Wynne (young vs. aged).

There was also an exclusive demonstration on the new monsters for the new Dragon Age DLC “The Darkspawn Chronicles“, set to be released on May 18th. Panel attendees were given a never before seen sneak peek into the new creatures that will be joining the ranks of the Darkspawn in “The Darkspawn Chronicles”. After struggling with the terrible camera in my iPhone to get a good shot of the new Dragon Age hotness, I gave up.

But trust me when I say, these new creatures will rock your evil little Darkspawn world. It sure rocked mine.

Next up: what I learned from Tommy Tallarico, Victor Lucas, and the power of lap-dances as a foothold in the game industry.

Electronic Arts Logo

Fox Business sat down with EA’s John Riccitiello where he discussed everything about EA.

He spoke about the upcoming holiday season and how he is confident that EA will see a jump in sales for Christmas season.

They also talk about The Beatles: Rock Band, online market in China, Bioware, and how much he loves Dead Space.

I love how he says, “We don’t make things people have to have, we make things people want to have.” I don’t know, I have to have Dragon Age Origins and quite a few other upcoming games.

Game Developer Magazine has published it’s Top 20 publishers report for 2009. The report shows that Nintendo has kept a hold on it’s top position for the third year in a row. The survey itself uses revenue data, reputation from industry professionals, release counts, average review scores and dev partners feedback.

Electronic Arts also kept it’s position from last year landing the second place overall while Activision Blizzard held the third spot and Ubisoft holding fourth. The movement starts with Take Two who wrote a place to 5th.

Companies making the top 20 for the first time are Bethesda Softworks, Viacom’s MTV and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. MTV enters at 14 mostly due to Harmonix’s Rock Band and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment enters at 16.

The full report is available in the October 2009 issue of Game Developer Magazine which you can find here.

Program “Getting Girls in the Game” launches today at the Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo (SIEGE) in Atlanta. The program is a two year mentoring opportunity to assist women getting into the digital entertainment industry.

Women in the digital entertainment industry barely make up 10 percent. Even though more than 40 percent of gamers in the US are female. Project Directors Abigail Joslin and Andrew Greenberg started Getting Girls in the Game to help create a community that supports women getting into the industry or into college.

“The Georgia Game Developers Association is very excited to see this program start; it is a much-needed initiative. Ultimately, it will help attract more women to an exciting industry, and improve the depth and caliber of games being produced,” said Clinton A. Lowe, President of the Georgia Game Developers Association.

No information is listed on how to get involved but I would inquire with SIEGE organizers to find out more.

True Games Interactive announced a brand new studio in Austin, Texas. The new studio will be working on a game in development that is based on online free-to-play content via micro-transactions.

“We are thrilled to announce the formation of our new development studio,” said Bob Drobish, Co-Founder and CEO of True Games Interactive. “This new studio will allow us to have more direct control and involvement in the development process of our games which is critical when you are developing new IP.”

The new studio is currently building it’s team. Find out more information on open positions at truegames.com

The new studio will be led by Frank Lucero who previously worked at Wolfpack Studios/Stray Bullet Games working on MMO and Nintendo Wii Titles. True Games headquarters are based in Irvine, California.