Back to the Bay Area today, after an exciting semi-demi-hemi-week of not quite catching up on stuff from my last trip. I am behind, very very behind, on a huge number of things, including diary entries about:

• the last 2 days of the Game Developers Conference;
• a related post about games-as-art, the prospects for innovative game design (I would totally play a game of Wonder Lincoln, even without the "Pairs Plague Dodging" bonus round), and how to get over the "big team, big budget, big schedule" hump;
• what I've been up to in the Bay Area and elsewhere for the last while;
• my attempts to machete a path through the desktop language jungle;
• why you should vote Phil Schwan in the next election -- write-in is fine! -- even if he doesn't end up running for The Money Party.

I bet you can't wait!

I'm at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose this week, and it's been very enjoyable so far.

I've been interested in game development for a very long time, perhaps as long as I've been interested in video games at all; Mom will no doubt relate some story about me typing machine language into my C-64 from the back of Compute's Gazette. There are a lot of things about the field that interest me quite a bit, but the main thing is, well, that there are a lot of things about the field that interest me. The inter-disciplinary nature -- marketing, psychology, visualization/graphics, artificial intelligence, all manner of art issues, networking, simulation/physics, interactive information presentation and user experience, etc. -- really turns my crank, you might say.

So I've been trying to hit a number of differently-targetted sessions here at the conference, while keeping my growing network of game-industry contacts fed and watered. I'll try to write about some of the more interesting stuff over the next few days, starting, well, now.

The first session I took in, on Wednesday morning, was about behavioural psychology as a system for discussion, investigation, and planning of gameplay systems. It focused almost exclusively on reward mechanics, which I suppose makes sense given the field from which the material is drawn, and while it wasn't the best presentation I've ever seen -- the speaker likely just needs a little more practice, and maybe some work on pacing -- it was pretty informative, and had just the right number of examples of counter-intuitive behaviour to keep people listening closely. If nothing else, I have a whole new set of terms to feed into Google. (As if I couldn't just have asked Madhava or Beltzner whenever I wanted.) It's nice to see more of these "Something 101 for Game People" talks at GDC, because there is a lot of rich material out there in the more academic spaces just waiting to be applied to the task of improving game characteristics. Wheel reinvention seems to be slowly going out of style.

I'd intended, after lunch, to see any number of interesting sessions about AI or game design, but instead Vlad lured me into one of the many NVIDIA sessions showcasing the goodies documented in their new GPU Gems book, with special attention paid to the effects made newly possible by their upcoming NV40 chipset. The demos weren't all that spectacular in and of themselves, but the technology elements that were underlying the presentations -- especially the vertex texture fetch and full FP rendering -- are very promising. I think I might have to buy a new computer this summer after all.

(I spent some time running around and chatting with various gaming types that I only "see" via email during the rest of the year, including some pleasant surprises from other parts of my career, like Netscape and Zero-Knowledge. It is indeed a small world, after all.)

The expo floor was relatively interesting, and much busier than it was in 2002. Lots of companies are hiring, often for multiple titles, and the combined onslaught of AMD64/NV40/R420/PSP/etc. made for a lot of relatively sexy demos. One game that really caught our eye is Saga of Ryzom, which looks like 4 MMO games jammed into one slick package. If I hadn't watched the demo right there, I'd have dismissed it as impossible vapourware, but it does looking like most of the goodies will be there for the summer release. Definitely one to watch, if you're at all interested in that game style. (World of Warcraft will be getting all the magazine covers, and perhaps not without reason, but Ryzom is nonetheless worthy of your attention.)

Next up was Brian Reynolds' AI-and-design talk, which was a mixed bag. For one thing, it was more evidence to support my proposed inverse relation between the size of the audience and the speed of the presentation. As a semi-frequent speaker myself, I understand some of the factors that might cause this to happen, but it's still annoying to see content drag out like that, especially when there's only an hour for what could be a very rich presentation. I know that I would want to make better use of an hour of Brian Reynolds' time, given my druthers. His suggestions for how to evolve AI and design in parallel and -- more importantly -- in harmony were good, though not earth-shattering. Given the generally-abysmal state of the art in game software engineering, though, the recommendation to "start small, refine to solve the most pressing constrain, and repeat until you run out of time" was likely a meaningful contribution to the industry.

Last session of the day was Peter Molyneux's take on AI-and-design (read: showcase of Bullfrog/Lionhead games, past, present and future). Nothing really earth-shattering, but by that point in the day I was quite exhausted, so I wasn't really complaining. Fable looks interesting enough that I'll probably pick it up, and his presentation style was quite engaging.

I'm flat-out exhausted now, so I'll leave today's blurbs for, well, tomorrow. I left lots of stuff out, I'm sure, but I'll try to answer questions if people care enough to leave them.

The aforementioned dissonance has been resolved, in a number of ways, and I thank everyone for their support and concern. I'm not going to write much more now, because I think I'm going to be writing a lot about work things in the next few weeks/months, and I'm on vacation now.

One of the strangest vacations of my life, in fact, but that's a story for another day.

A lesson I've taken away from this week's travels to the Bay Area:

If your cell phone display says "Cingular", you've already lost.

Totally unacceptable.

Ever get totally kicked in the teeth by a comment (or short email) from someone which reveals an enormous gap between how you percieve something and how they percieve something? Ever have that happen a few dozen hours after the last conversation with that person, in which it very much seemed that everything was well-aligned, and things were proceeding well?

Yeah, me too.

(Honestly, this is the biggest "what the hell?" moment I've had in quite some time, and it's not like my professional life has been devoid of this sort of disconnect over the last year or two. I'm flabbergasted.)

Alasdair and I (mostly Alasdair, honestly) weathered some unpleasant weather and drivers of questionable talent to return to Toronto in time for both of our commitments: he had to work at 3, and I had a flight at 19:30 to San Francisco, where I am spending 2 days working on Lustrey bits from the comforts of the Mozilla Foundation offices, and then 3 days attending the Game Developers Conference for my own amusement and edification.

The flight was uneventful, as they should all be, and Eleanor and Brendan arrived promptly to pick me up at the airport, Natalie Anne in tow. I was whisked off to their lovely home, where I am a lucky guest for the next few days. Should be a lot of fun.

I have always considered the profound distinction between ninjas and pirates to be an absolute one.

("ology", BTW, is for science)

It’s sort of a shame that apparently the faux ban on Leaf jerseys at the Corel Centre won’t be in effect for this Saturday’s game against the Hurricanes, at which Tyla and I will be in attendance. I was looking forward to bringing a big box of pablum for the Ottawa babies.

This past Sunday we celebrated my grandfather’s 81st birthday, with a nice family get-together at the (lovely) home of my Uncle Steve and Aunt Marg. It’s always wonderful to see everyone¹ together, I have to say. It was quite a festive affair, especially because Chad and Jen shared their double-barreled news with us all: not only have they bought a lovely home in Oakville, but they’ve got a baby on the way to help fill it. Amazing stuff, and boy, did it ever not help my baby-craving to be talking about it all afternoon. Hoo boy.

¹ Actually, Steph couldn’t make it, but we talked about her quite a bit anyway. In other Steph news, she’s on the cover of Salon Magazine. Nice picture, I have to say.

Madhava came over yesterday and I showed him the interface for the web tool I’m working on. He didn’t throw up even a little, at least while he was still here. We had quite a productive chat about the data I need to present and what my constraints are — number one with a bullet: web tool, usable in at least Mozilla + IE, probably Safari as well — and he brought me an outrageously cool book chock full of blurbs on different, well, information graphics. Soon I’ll be able to talk like a real interface devotee, and not just someone scrambling against the clock to produce anything usable.

If someone out there can tell me how to display JS errors in Konqueror, preferably the version that comes with Fedora Core 1¹, I would appreciate it. Otherwise, I think I have to buy a Mac, or something.

Other than that, though, I’m getting quite a bit done with the web management tool, and for a web UI I think it’s really quite pleasant to use. And with the schedule I’m on for this thing, I will totally settle for being the tallest pygmy. Even gd’s little problem switching line colours with antialiasing turned on — or so the problem seems to be, to me — can’t get me down.

¹ kdebase-3.1.4-6