GDC 2007 Round-up

Article - With the dust settled, Stevie picks apart the biggest news

With the tech generalisations of CES done and dusted as an early precursor to 2007's gradually unfolding cavalcade of trade shows, conferences, and expos, it now falls to San Francisco's perennial favourite, the Game Developers Conference (GDC), to shine a more focused gaming light on the year's coming highpoints. And, in true conference style, the industry's giants took the opportunity provided by GDC's global platform to whip the covers of anticipation off some notably impressive gaming aspects - all of which are gathered here for you to peruse at your leisure in our GDC 2007 highlights round-up.

Increasing the size of the competition

Microsoft's attempts at hogging the conference limelight came through the application of some intriguing bolstering to its XNA Game Studio Express toolset, with the announcement of the Dream-Build-Play game development competition where "aspiring game developers [will be given] the opportunity to showcase their innovation and talent to the world." Entrants will utilise Microsoft's XNA toolset to design and engineer their own videogame creation for the 'do-it-yourself' contest, with the winner receiving a $10,000 USD cash prize and (perhaps more importantly) an Xbox Live Arcade publishing contract that will deliver their game to the Xbox masses. What's more, 20 runners up will scoop additional prizes provided by the likes of AMD, Alienware, Autodesk Inc., Microsoft, and Softimage Co.

And anyone doubting the quality of the final product offered up by XNA Game Studio Express will soon be in a position to bear witness to the arrival of Schizoid, the first ever XNA-created title. Schizoid, which is a product of Torpex Games, is a co-operative action adventure that will be made available via Xbox Live Arcade before the close of 2007.

So, if you're presently pouring vast amounts of time and effort into XNA with hopes of one day growing into the next 'big thing' in development circles, then you've got until 02 July, 2007 to engineer a winning masterpiece. Competition entry details and related requirements can be seen by visiting the official Dream-Build-Play competition website.

Beyond the attraction of a cool $10,000 and the exposure for XNA provided by the Dream-Build-Play contest, Microsoft also used GDC to officially unveil that Xbox Live Arcade download capacities have been boosted from their existing 50MB ceiling through to a more hefty and significant 150MB. The move perhaps came as somewhat of a surprise considering that Microsoft made no prior mention of increasing the size of its Xbox Live Arcade downloads - with 50MB existing as an appropriate size so that Xbox 360 owners without a hard drive (yes, they do exist) could still enjoy the Arcade service via the console's 64MB memory unit. So, in order to not leave those users in the sizing lurch, Microsoft also coupled the 150MB expansion with a newly announced 512MB memory card. Perfect.

Expectant memory card users eager to get their mitts on the 512MB unit don't have long to wait, with it arriving across the globe on 03 April 2007. And, furthermore, the memory card will arrive with Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved pre-loaded for a total price of $49.99 USD - and, as it arrives, the current $39.99 USD attributed to the 64MB card will drop to $29.99 USD.

Serious about gaming?

The GDC's Serious Games Summit saw SquareEnix (purveyors of the Final Fantasy series) and its newly formed serious games unit venturing forth its new serious Nintendo DS game that's designed to convey the challenge, pleasure, and fulfilment of videogame developing. More pointedly, the company's chief strategist, Ichiro Otobe, used the Serious Games Summit to express that videogames stand at a crossroads defined by outstanding market success but a lack of genuine social recognition.

"There's a huge, huge potential that [serious] games can become mainstream media," commented Ichiro, "but without active involvement from the developer community, it will stay niche." And, in a move to highlight that such games could and should be "taken seriously by society" as well as a success financially, Otobe underscored the significance of serious games during 2006 (or 'non-games' as they're sometimes called) such as Brain Training, Common Sense Training, Cooking Navi, and English Training - all of which exist as some of Japan's top-selling releases.

In an effort to not only impact but also lead the serious games market, SquareEnix has now joined forces with Gakken Publishing to launch SGLabs, which will focus wholly on creating serious titles. Otobe, perhaps naturally, exercised some reticence concerning specific details pertaining to SGLabs' upcoming projects, but pointed out that Gakken was responsible for a Japanese serious comic book 'revolution' during the 1970s, which served to provide edutainment on real-life content. The comics went on to sell in excess of 20 million copies and served to inspire a young Otobe, "We can do that with games, if we really push serious gaming content," he enthused.

The serious Nintendo DS game that SquareEnix will be working on internally is currently known under the working title 'Project GB' and it is being headed up by Tadashi Tsushima (programmer on Vagrant Story) and a small crew of 10 talented individuals who hope to deliver a product that teaches 'players' about the fun and artistry of actual game development. Specifically, in terms of content, Project GB will showcase and deliver the skills associated with game creation, such as animation composition, gameplay parameters, graphic design, musical design, programming, and games writing, so that the player's tangible hands-on experiences might actually spawn what SquareEnix refers to as "a true game brain".

It's still not known whether Project GB will emerge as a mass produced title, but the mere prospect of actually gaining priceless gameplay-powered insight into the production aspects of the industry we all love certainly means that many DS owners will be crossing all applicable body appendages in the hope that it does.

Return of the Living Dead

If you're one of the world's many, many gamers that missed out on experiencing Nokia's much-maligned N-Gage before its untimely demise at E3 2005, then worry not because, um, it's being, you know, re-launched. Though, to be honest, based on the format's existing track record, then why on Earth would you want to risk the technological investment?

Well, Nokia's director of publishing, Greg Sauter, took up that very challenge at GDC, providing an advance look at what the new "N*Gage" will have to offer. Indeed, Sauter opened with concern regarding the "immature" state of the mobile phone games arena, and intonated that Nokia's positioning as the world's largest producer of mobile devices left it ideally suited to revolutionise the space. "We need to evolve this industry," exclaimed Sauter, before outlining that Nokia, as a company in a transitional period, wants to be seen as a company that not only makes mobile hardware, but also "one that provides experiences" for its users.

Nokia's belief is centred on the largely restrictive proprietary nature of the mobile industry, which sees individual devices laboured with individual demands, while wireless network devices and MP3 hardware relies on what Sauter referred to as "convergent" features, essentially enabling devices to actually communicate between themselves.

According to Nokia, its latest (re)incarnation of the N*Gage platform will see the device attempting to adopt the aforementioned technological aspects by integrating a software layer atop of Symbian hardware in order to open the N*Gage up to take advantage of Sauter's vaunted 'convergence' while also giving developers a hardware-independent platform to work with.

Sauter also claimed that by the time Nokia's newly engineered N*Gage goes live (Q3 2007), "There will already be dozens of platforms that are N*Gage compatible," and that Nokia's plans include "great converged devices" and, of course, "great games" on a piece of fluid hardware that will not be static. "It grows," said Sauter, "We're gonna keep adding features." In that sense, Nokia also intends to hone elements related to community and distribution, thus - if successful - transforming the new N*Gage into a device centred on user services. For example, users will be able to buy and download their games online, via external media, or direct from the N*Gage store. And - yes, there's more - users will also be able to build friend lists, personal profiles, and even game with/against their buddies online.