Sid Meier’s GDC2010 keynote, entitled “Psychology of Game Design: Everything You know is Wrong” was a great combination of his own successes with the Civilization series and some interesting, albeit comical, errors he made along the way.
Meier then went on to talk about his previous mistakes in video game development which he entitled “My Bad.” He mentions mistakes such as making the first Civ a real-time game and also mentioning a Dinosaur themed game that he attempted a while back which never took off for reasons he still cannot figure out. Of the mistakes he mentioned, the most hilarious was his story about development of the upcoming Civilization Network in which he added the ability for players to give gold to other players for various reasons. It turns out that no one decided to give any of their gold to anyone else!
CGSociety has a great writeup of his entire keynote, and GameSpot has the entire video online to view. I’ve embedded it below.
Sid Meier is a household name in some circles, known around the world for his Civilization series of games as wel as Pirates!, Alpha Centauri, and others. Attendees of GDC2010 will have the chance to bask in his glory and share his knowledge as he keynotes the conference.
In his keynote, Meier will discuss the finer definitions of designing a game, using the results of years of player study in his own games. Human psychology has more direct influence in design than does any collection of physics, math or engineering. Studying what the player wants to do and then why, gives the game designer more direction to how he should then allow the player to get what they want.
It seems early, but the ACM SIGGRAPH group has just announced one of the Keynote Speakers that attendees will have the priveledge of hearing, Carnegie Mellon’s Don Marinelli.
“With each passing year, the boundary between artists, scientists, and graphic experts becomes more blurred,” stated Terrence Masson, SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference Chair from Northeastern University. “To truly have the highest quality final product, whether that is a film or an interactive installation, collaborators from different fields must understand each other. Marinelli is an expert at bridging these different disciplines for the best end result. In essence, this is an underlying theme throughout SIGGRAPH’s history and his insights will be enlightening to all working professionals and students.”
Don Marinelli co-found the Master of Entertainment Technology Degree Program with Randy Paush, and a book “The Comet and the Tornado” being released this spring.
Cevat Yerli, co-founder of Crytek, spoke at the GDC Europe conference yesterday and dropped the ominous bomb that “there may not be a next-gen console), and points the finger of blame squarely at Nintendo.
Despite the criticisms the company has received over the years, Yerli said that Crytek will still focus on making its engines highly scalable–meaning that games of today will look even better two or three years from now while allowing older PCs to run the game admirably as well. He said this is partly due to the uncertainty of when next-gen consoles will be available. Although Crytek estimates 2012 or 2013, he also said that there’s a big debate on whether there will be a next generation at all thanks to the “relatively horsepower-light” Nintendo Wii.
Even after having said that, he went on to praise the power of GPU computing and recommended OpenCL.
Sid Meier’s GDC2010 keynote, entitled “Psychology of Game Design: Everything You know is Wrong” was a great combination of his own successes with the Civilization series and some interesting, albeit comical, errors he made along the way.
Sid Meier is a household name in some circles, known around the world for his Civilization series of games as wel as Pirates!, Alpha Centauri, and others. Attendees of GDC2010 will have the chance to bask in his glory and share his knowledge as he keynotes the conference.
It seems early, but the ACM SIGGRAPH group has just announced one of the Keynote Speakers that attendees will have the priveledge of hearing, Carnegie Mellon’s Don Marinelli.
Cevat Yerli, co-founder of Crytek, spoke at the GDC Europe conference yesterday and dropped the ominous bomb that “there may not be a next-gen console), and points the finger of blame squarely at Nintendo.
VizWorld.com 
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